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.

If They Don't Know, You Can't Tell 'Em

So there is going to be a sequel to Paranormal Activity. Why? Because studios are apparently deaf, dumb, blind and don't know a valuable lesson when it drops in their lap. I'm not going to report anything about the filmmakers or the plot details. You can read that here. What I want to say is: when will studios ever learn?

I just finished reading Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart's book Boffa (which I don't recommend) and the moral of the entire book is basically that, throughout history, time and time again, a work will come along that no one believes in, will be made under the most dire of circumstances and become a huge cultural phenomenon. Bart refers to the likes of Cats, The Sound of Music, Baywatch, etc.

Although Bart's examples represent works that fly way beyond the confines of their medium and out into the realm of popular culture, we still see this kind of thing happen almost every year, just on a smaller scale.

Want proof? How about Paranormal Activity, Gran Torino, Juno, Slumdog Millionaire or even Avatar? I won't run through each in detail, but take Gran Torino as an example. The film opened in limited release for two weeks, gaining good reviews from the critics and positive word-of-mouth amongst viewers. It then opened on it's third week and plowed through the big studio phone-in job Bride Wars. Not only that but the film managed to stick around on the charts for weeks on end and ended up with a final gross of a little more than $148 million. Final gross for Bride Wars, which basically disappeared after it's first week: $59 million.

I like this example for two reasons. It shows that no matter how much money studios sink into stupid scripts tailored for big name stars like Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson to collected a nice paycheck, and no matter how many millions they sink into big advertising campaigns to make sure their desired teenage audience hit the theater on opening weekend, the best advertising is still positive word-of-mouth. They also prove that people value quality over quantity. That Clint Eastwood can still steal the box office in his 70s is all the proof one needs in seeing that classical filmmaking trends (i.e. quite, meaningful, entertaining character dramas) can still equate to big business

That also means that the best distribution method is still to open a film gradually, testing the markets for a response before opening wide. Nowadays studios throw all their efforts into the opening weekend, take the top spot and disappear almost completely the next week, when they start the same old routine over again. That's not the way it used to be. Jaws presents the ultimate example of how to distribute a blockbuster. Here's a film that opened gradually, built a reputation and stayed at the top all summer.

Avatar is doing that now too. It opened in the $70 millions on its first week (poor if you take the budget into consideration). Do you want to know why? Because studios stupidly advertised it as a high adrenaline sci-fi action flick, ultimately limiting its audience to fan boys. Todd Phillips once told the Toronto Sun that the reason The Hangover did so good is because the ads pulled no punches. They let the potential viewer see exactly what they were in for: a raunchy comedy.

So many film trailers these days try to mould the actual film itself into looking like something it is not; to dull the drama or the intelligence in favour of thrills and spectacles. How many times, after all, have you walked out of the multiplex either pleasantly surprised or disgusted by how little the film you saw was the one you expected to see?

Avatar was the same way. Not until the following weeks when word got around that it also involved a touching love story, a meaningful plot and strong characters did it gain it's momentum, as both males and females of all ages flocked to see it again and again as they did with Titanic 12 years ago.

Word-of-mouth saved the day for Avatar as it also did for Juno and Slumdog Millionaire, which it's director Danny Boyle feared would be released straight to video before winning the top award at the Toronto International Film Festival, breaking art house cinema attendance records, sneaking into mainstream theaters and ultimately taking the Academy Award for best picture.

Paranormal Activity is the same story. It was made for less than a million dollars, became a midnight movie sensation at festivals, opened in limited release for several weeks until opening wide and blowing the big studio players out of the water. It opened against the expected money maker Saw 6, which ended up with a total gross of just under $26 million. Final Paranormal Activity gross: just shy of $109 million. You do the math.

Why then are studios scared to invest money into properly marketing independent films that have the potential to be huge breakout hits like Juno or Slumdog, especially when history has proven time and again that it is possible for little films to generate big results? Who knows? Instead, year after year, the studios comb the vaults of popular culture to see what series they can get another installment out of or reboot or remake or whatever the buzz word is these days.

What the studios need to do is analyze all of these above mentioned films and see what they all have in common. Each film is an original work, based on an original concept. They don't rely on big stars (except Gran Torino) or the best special effects (except Avatar), but rather they focus on building a unique story that involves strong characters that are developed enough for an audience to care enough about to want to share in their journey. They are also about universal human needs, emotions and problems and therefore put drama at the forefront above all else (except for Paranormal Activity).

Above all, and maybe most important, they deliver a quality product. It doesn't matter how much Paranormal Activity grossed in comparison to it's budget, because it wasn't a fluke that people ran to see it. The reason people loved it was because it was something that so few contemporary horror films are anymore: genuinely scary. That's what it's ads promised, that's exactly what it delivered and that's exactly what people told their friends about it. Nothing more and nothing less. The Blair Witch Project was the same story.

It's unfortunate then that the studios, instead of searching for other original works of both quality and integrity, decide to go the lazy route and plan a sequel to a film that doesn't even begin to warrant one; not understanding that the very reason that film was such a smash is because it offered something, if not totally new, than at least rare these days. To try to duplicate that seems like a fruitless task in my opinion. Lightening, after all, rarely strikes the same spot twice.

The final question to ask is will it sell? Personally I'd like to think not. I'd like to believe that people can see when they are simply being exploited and will reject such efforts as they did with the Blair Witch sequel, which was almost unwatchable and also a disaster at the box office. Maybe that's the biggest shame in this whole story. Not only does Hollywood not learn from its successes, it doesn't learn from it's failures either.