Hereafter
Clint Eastwood's Westerns such as High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider dealt with metaphysics, but they were torrid tales of Riders of the Storm meting out justice to the living. Hereafter, a metaphysical thriller (though a psychological drama with a metaphysical theme might be more accurate description) avoids cheap sensationalism and focuses on people who miss their dearly departed to the point of desiring a peek behind the big sleep. We follow the travails of a French journalist, a boy whose father died in a car wreck, a man who lost his wife, and, most of all, their guide through the spirit world, George Lonegan (Matt Damon) a construction worker-medium. In dealing with the touchy theme of the spiritual, Eastwood builds tension by filling characters' interactions with psychological nuances. Commendably, the story avoids easy answers to questions on the afterlife. Eastwood and his actors achieve a tone that doesn't force the material but embraces it: Not dreamlike, but evoking a reverie state, writes Roger Ebert.
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood (b. 1930, San Francisco) is a living Hollywood legend. Steven Spielberg called him maybe the last real man in American film. He abandoned sports and military careers in favor of television, making his debut in the Rawhide TV series. From there, he ventured to Italy where, inspired by Sergio Leone, he created the man with no name for the Spaghetti Western Dollars Trilogy. After getting back stateside, he portrayed another now iconic character, inspector Harry Callahan, aka Dirty Harry. On the set of that film, he replaced the director, Don Siegel, in several scenes. The same year, he debuted as a director in his own right with the thriller Play Misty for Me, produced by his own Malpaso studio established in 1967. Up until Bird, Eastwood's directorial efforts (mainly Westerns and action movies) were primarily a successful reworking of genre schematics. Starting with the Charlie Parker biopic, Eastwood's seasoned work takes on qualities of realistic psychological cinema with a moralist streak. Winner of two Oscars for directing, the Irvin Thalberg prize and an honorary Golden Palm (2002).
Selected filmography
1971 Zagraj dla mnie, Misty / Play Misty for Me
1980 Bronco Billy
1992 Bez przebaczenia / Unforgiven
2000 Kosmiczni kowboje / Space Cowboys
2003 Rzeka tajemnic / Mystic River
2006 Sztandar chwały / Flags of Our Fathers
2006 Listy z Iwo Jimy / Letters from Iwo Jima
2014 Jersey Boys
