Cinema Nova, 10/02/2011
Movie #10 for 2011
I’m an atheist. I’m about as atheist as you can get. So to enjoy a film about the afterlife, I was really going to have to suspend my disbelief. I am happy to do that though, and am very well practiced at it. I thought MATT DAMON would help too but turns out that he - although fine - wasn’t quite enough.
Damon plays George, a San Francisco-based psychic who has turned his back on his ‘curse’ in an attempt to live a less complicated life. At the same time, Marie (CECILE de FRANCE, Orchestra Seats) is the French equivalent of Kerry O’Brien, but she’s struggling to function after a near-death experience in the Boxing Day tsunami. As well as that, young Marcus is struggling with the death of his twin brother all the way over in England.
Writer PETER MORGAN (The Queen, The Damned United, Frost/Nixon) and director CLINT EASTWOOD spend a lot of time establishing how disparate and wholly unconnected the three characters are to make their inevitable coming together seems more miraculous. Doesn’t, though, just it seem more hokey. Although the performances from the grown-ups were fine, the boys playing the twins were so wooden and awkward, it was difficult to watch.
The film felt like a very personal story for the director (which is an achievement by Eastwood if nothing else because it ran like it was written by committee). But it did make me uncomfortable that, as an atheist and unbeliever, I was most definitely the film’s bad guy and was ripe for conversion. Didn’t work, though, I’m still an atheist.
