It is more about the living dead--about people carrying on their lives after hope and meaning have gone. The film is so sad, so tender toward its characters. The lawyer, an outsider who might at first seem like the source of more trouble, comes across more like a witness, who regards the stricken parents and sees his own approaching loss of a daughter in their eyes.
Ian Holm's performance here is bottomless with its subtlety; he proceeds doggedly through the town, following the routine of his profession, as if this is his penance. And there is a later scene, set on an airplane, where he finds himself seated next to his daughter's childhood friend, and remembers, in a heart-breaking monologue, a time in childhood when his daughter almost died of a spider bite.
Is it good or bad that she survived, in order now to die of drugs? Egoyan sees the town so vividly. A hearing is held in the village hall, where folding tables and chairs wait for potluck dinners and bingo nights. A foosball table is in a corner. In another corner, Nicole, in her wheelchair, describes the accident. She lies. It is too simple to say she lies as a form of getting even, because we wonder--if she were not in a wheelchair, would she feel the same way?
Does she feel abused, or scorned? This is one of the best films of the year, an unflinching lament for the human condition. Yes, it is told out of sequence, but not as a gimmick: In a way, Egoyan has constructed this film in the simplest possible way. It isn't about the beginning and end of the plot, but about the beginning and end of the emotions. In his first scene, the lawyer tells his daughter he doesn't know who he's talking to. In one of his closing scenes, he remembers a time when he did know her.
Stephanie Morgenstern Allison as Allison. Kirsten Kieferle Stewardess as Stewardess. Earl Pastko Hartley as Hartley. Simon Baker Bear as Bear. David Hemblen Abbott as Abbott.
Bruce Greenwood Billy as Billy. Sarah Rosen Fruitman Jessica as Jessica. Marc Donato Mason as Mason. Devon Finn Sean as Sean. Fides Krucker Klara as Klara. Atom Egoyan. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. A small community is torn apart by a tragic accident which kills most of the town's children. A lawyer visits the victims' parents in order to profit from the tragedy by stirring up their anger and launching a class action suit against anyone they can blame.
The community is paralyzed by its anger and cannot let go. All but one young girl, left in a wheelchair after the accident, who finds the courage to lead the way toward healing. Sometimes courage comes from the most surprising places. Rated R for sexuality and some language. Did you know Edit. Trivia As indicated on writer and director Atom Egoyan 's commentary track on the DVD, many people ask about the odd mask worn by the notetaker during the deposition scene.
This is a stenographer's mask, an item which is used in real life by a stenographer to record his or her own voice during the deposition. Goofs In at least one scene, speeds were mentioned in "miles per hour". Quotes Mason : Nicole, did the Pied Piper take the children away because he was mad that the town didn't pay him? User reviews Review. But is he in fact communicating with people beyond the grave?
Some form of telepathy might be possible, and he may simply be receiving what his subjects desire or need to be told by their dead loved ones. He brings nothing from beyond the grave that his clients could not have formed in their living minds. This is a subject that lends itself to sensation and psychic baloney. It's astonishing how many people believe New Age notions, which have the attraction of allowing believers to confer supernormal abilities on themselves and others without the bother of plausibility.
Eastwood's film will leave such people vaguely uneasy. It believes most psychics are frauds. It supposes one who seems to be the real thing, but what, exactly, is he real about? This is a film for intelligent people who are naturally curious about what happens when the shutters close. Eastwood tells three primary stories.
The stories meet at the end, in one of those coincidences so beloved by multiple-strand movies. Is this possible? Is it likely? A coincidence never is.
That's why we notice them. Throughout the film, the characters behave in ways that seem reasonable enough, and possibilities are left open, which is as it should be. We must live the lives we know and not count on anything beyond the horizon.
I won't describe here the traumatic surprises some of them experience. In the surprises as in everything else, "Hereafter" is believable. There are terrifying events, but Eastwood handles them not for sensation but to show how close we all are, at any moment, to oblivion. In the case of Marie, she undergoes the near death experience we often hear reported, with the white light and the figures.
Are people in such a state already dead, or are they experiencing visions generated by the human mind in its final shutdown mode? The powers of the Damon character seem to be authentic, although what they prove is hard to say. There is a moment handled with love and delicacy in which he says something that is either true or isn't, but is a kindness either way. When he holds a stranger's hands he experiences a flash of telepathic insight, but the movie never declares that his insights literally come from dead spirits.
0コメント