Another Oscar Contender

Our family is 3 for 3. 3 great movies the last 3 times we've gone to the theater. This time was no different.


We saw Hereafter - Clint Eastwood's new movie. Matt Damon was the only main actor I recognized from the movie, but I recognized a few of the supporting actors by their faces and not their names. I was hesitant after seeing trailers of this movie. It looked silly and I was not interested in the lease to go see it. Until it got an amazing review in the New York Times. I didn't know it was a Clint Eastwood movie to begin with, but the review called it his masterpiece. So I became intrigued. We watched it Friday night - and it blew us away.

It was a powerful movie from the start. The opening sequence truly hit me like the crashing wall of water the started the movie. It started with the tsunami - almost like the one that hit the Pacific several years ago. It was a powerful sequence to watch and to feel the fear that must have been present during that natural disaster. That took me several minutes to get over the first 5 minutes of the film - it surprised me how hard I was taking it. But the stories that are soon intertwined are so genuine that you cannot help to be pulled into the world that is created.

I have to admit I was crying during the twin boys' story. When the brother loses his twin, I knew how he felt. I haven't lost my sister in the same sense that Marcus had--but I still feel his lost. I felt his loneliness and his fear of not knowing what to do because his sibling had moved on. I also enjoyed the fact that a third of the movie was in French. Clint Eastwood is not afraid of language, and I think that makes him a very unique director in today's cinematic genres.

This movie is about death - just reading the title can give you that. But it is not death in its usual Hollywood production. In most movies, death just happens. Heroes kill those around them without giving them a second glance, all in the name of some justice. Or it is mocked and joked about as a punchline. If not those two categories, death is seen as the spooky part of life. Ghosts, undead, hauntings are what most people think of now when they see a movie about death. Not this movie--it respects the journey that is death. It gave it the reverence that it deserves; that it is not spooky, creepy, unimportant. That there is something after this life, and that those on the other side want to speak to us about how to one day return to them.

Having the gospel in my life gives me more clarity to the passage that is death. This movie is vague in some areas when it comes to the afterlife - but with the truth of the gospel I know that there is indeed a life after this one. That there are loved ones passed the veil that want to help us return to them after we have finished our purposes on the earth. There is nothing creepy about dying, and there is nothing absolute or final about our last moments on the earth. There is an existence after this life that will allow us to grow and progress still.

I truly felt like Clint Eastwood was giving a voice to those who do not have something like the gospel which gives us the knowledge about death and what happens to us. It was only a small portion of what there is to know, but it is a start for a world who is so often against learning about the mystical or unseen.