Rabbit Hole (5 out of 5)

Rabbit Hole is one of those movies that starts out about the death of a child and slowly opens up into new ideas and new realizations until it finally opens up into profound questions about the infinity of the universe, the mysteries of space and time, the complexities of happiness and the impossibility of life and death. It makes you realize just how finite and un-malleable time really is, how large and impossible life can be, how truly insignificant we are within whatever it is out there beyond the solar system that we have no concept of and that could, beyond all living logic and reason, stretch on forever and ever amen. It makes us appreciate the little, simple things that we can grasp onto and understand because, when it all comes down to it, it is, all we really know in this big, complex mess of a world. What’s above the clouds and beyond the stars isn’t for us to know, which is fine, we've got our own stuff to deal with anyway.


That’s what Rabbit Hole is about: it’s about whittling the world down into manageable things in order to take steps forward, one day at a time, to find order in the mess and ultimately guide a life into, hopefully, happiness with as little destruction and suffering along the way.

Oh yes, this is a movie of ideas. All true drama is. Howie (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Nicole Kidman) have lost their young son. Howie moves on while trying to appear as if life continues. He willingly goes to the loss groups and finds comfort in watching a video of him and his son on his Iphone.

Becca however, seems composed and yet cold, putting everything inside. She's confused but doesn’t know about what, can’t stand the pathetic people at the group, wants to rid the house of everything that reminders her of her son and resents her mother (Diane Wiest), who also lost a son, for trying to relate to her. Her son, after all, was a 4 year old who ran out on the road while her brother was a 30 year old heroin addict who overdosed.

Soon Becca, off from work, begins following the boy who hit her son until they finally meet face-to-face and talk in the park. She finds comfort in him, realizing that he is just a boy, riddled with guilt, trying to move on. Was he going too fast that day? It hardly matters in the grand scheme. The two spark up a friendship of sorts in so much as that they feel that each is probably essential to the others recovery or else just a way for Becca to continue to hold on as best she can. He may have taken her son but, is he really to be blamed? Is anyone?

And then the movie, without breaking it’s narrative simplicity or quiet emotional power, begins pulling back to reveal larger, more profound concepts, not just about life and death, but about the universe and the possibility that maybe there is another, alternate one where, right now, in their suffering, these people could be happy.

It’s not so much a question of Heaven, but rather a question of if this is all there is. Is life only as it appears before us; what you see is what you get? Or are there things out there, working, somewhere else out of our sight, where things are better, happier, nicer? Where little boys can’t be taken away because they aren’t 30 year old heroin addicts? And maybe there isn’t and such thinking is just a means to grab on to any semblance of hope in order to cope with the hand you’ve been dealt. The movie doesn’t try to answer these questions. How could it? These thoughts are simply the logical extension of death, which, in a sense, gives one a whole new perspective on life.

The film was directed by John Cameron Mitchell who has done an about face from the flamboyance and excess of his first two features Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus. Here Mitchell isn’t flashy or sexy but rather stark and desolate as he allows his characters to cope with this situation on their own natural emotional terms. Sometimes humour sneaks through, but then again, why wouldn’t it, as humour seems the only natural way to cope with tragedy.

And then the film ends, as Hereafter did, with the three most profound words that can come in any work that deals with life and death: I don’t know. That is, after all, all we every really know on the subject.

Hereafter (5 out of 5)

To believe in the afterlife is not necessarily to believe in God. It is, instead, to believe in anything other than nothing. That is, after all, the reason we believe in anything isn’t it: in hope that, no matter how things are now, there’s always something better just up ahead and around the corner? Some feel that death is what makes life important. If you think about it, depending on where you stand, it’s also what makes life insignificant. We live and then we die. It’s not glamorous. Maybe that’s why we need to believe in something after death: if this is it, most of us would probably demand a refund. That’s one of life’s little contradictions: the reality of death makes us live a little better while it also means that everything we do here is essentially meaningless. Sure, some could leave a timeless legacy behind but, all the same, at the end of the tunnel there’s only one choice and it’s the same for everyone. Hereafter, Clint Eastwood’s newest directorial effort isn’t much more profound than that, which is, so to speak, about as profound as it needs to be.

The film follows three people whose lives are all affected in some way by death. The first is TV newswoman Marie (Cecile de France) who, while vacationing is caught in a tsunami. By the time she washes up on dry land she is assumed dead but jolts back to life after experiencing a blurry vision of shadowed figures shrouded in bright light. The experience leaves her distracted and having visions of a possible afterlife. Her producer/lover tells her to take a break from work and write the book she’s always wanted to. However, so changed is she that her writing and research begins jeering toward exploring the possibilities of an afterlife.

The second is Marcus (played by twin brothers George and Frankie McLaren) who is taken away from his drug addled mother after the accidental death of his twin brother Jason. Put in foster care and seeking some kind of understanding on why his brother, the leader of the two, needed to die, Marcus travels from psychic to psychic, only to be handed cheap entertainment value and no real answers.

The final is George (Matt Damon), a man who, as a child, had a crippling disease which required surgery that left him dead for several moments on the operating table. After his recovery he was plagued by visions of the dead. He was diagnosed as partially schizophrenic and put on pills, which made the visions go away along with just about everything else as well. His brother Billy (Jay Mohr) makes him into a famous psychic until George cannot take it any more, gets a job as a labourer and starts taking cooking classes. Despite Billy’s belief that George should use his gift to help people, a life focused entirely on death is not a life at all to George who believes himself to be cursed by this burden that restricts him from forming any normal, meaningful relationships in his life.

It is then only natural that these three stories will all converge in one way or another. But this isn’t a film driven by plot gimmicks or convenient red herrings. Instead Eastwood and his writer Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) play it straight, weaving a subtle tapestry that looks at death honestly and thoughtfully. This isn’t a film about spirits or hauntings, it’s a subtle human drama about how death shapes our perceptions of life as Eastwood gently builds up questions about whether or not the afterlife even exists. Is everything a product of chance or fate? Does the ability to communicate with the dead provide proof of Heaven or God or is such an ability just a condition of the mind to begin with?

What is most remarkable about Hereafter is then the subtly yet depth with which Eastwood approaches his material: never resorting to pseudo-philosophy or providing answers to eternally unanswerable questions.

Many people will be turned off by this. The human mind has a natural reflex to instantly fill in the blanks and find artistic meaning in everything. “But what’s the movie about,” many will shout. It’s about one scene. I’ll describe it for you. Despite the fact that, because the movie has no twist or deep mystery to discover, this description hardly constitutes giving away anything important, I’ll still throw out a spoiler alert for those who have not seen the film.

The scene takes place between George and Marcus. George has reluctantly agreed to give the kid a reading in order to contact his brother. George acts as the medium but after a while loses the signal. “Where did he go?” The kids demands. “I don’t know,” replies George. It’s one of those brilliant Clint Eastwood scenes, so subtle that they could be mistaken for nothing and yet are still the heart of the film, concealing such dramatic revelation, in which the faces of two characters, both half obscured by darkness, are intercut. They are physically divided and yet symbolically singled, sharing, for one moment, a common metaphysical bond.

And that’s it, the truth of all three characters: “I don’t know.” That is, after all, to paraphrase Socrates, all we every really know about anything.