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I’ve said before in this blog that you can’t underestimate Clint Eastwood come awards season. But I’m beginning to think that’s not the case any more. Changeling and Gran Torino had little effect on awards season while Invictus couldn’t ride Eastwood to Best Picture as plenty thought it would.
And now Hereafter has quickly dropped from memory. I’m not going to say that fate is undeserved, but it’s a more ambitious and memorable film than Eastwood’s recent works. I had loads of problems with it, but it has still hung around in my head the past few months.
The plot ruminates on life after death via three characters. Matt Damon has some sort of visionary power that allows him to see people’s departed loved ones, a skill he sees as a curse since it prevents him from living a normal life. Cécile De France is a French journalist who narrowly survives the Asian tsunami in the film’s harrowing opening. She experiences a glimpse of the afterlife and uses her journalistic skills to investigate. Finally, Frankie and George McLaren play grade school twins. One is killed and the other looks for answers.
The film has some real narrative problems and the usual Eastwood problems. Each thread is beset by problems and dull stretches. When the stories finally meet it’s unsatisfying. Really everything feels like it needs a tightening up, which makes sense since it was apparently shot off an early draft of Peter Morgan’s script. Some of the acting is suspect.
"Act sadder!"
But even as I fidgeted in my seat during the story’s missteps, I was still taken in by the film’s thoughtful address of its themes. The characters’ struggles, particularly Damon’s and De France’s, are affecting. De France’s segment looks at the science behind the common “peace and bright light” near-death experiences while Damon’s wonders if we should even strive to know the answer to the afterlife.
Don’t go into Hereafter expecting an answer. Perhaps at his age Eastwood knows that answers don’t come easy. And while I would understand if the film’s story problems kills it for you, I found viewing to be a rewarding experience, albeit one I like better to look back on than I did while sitting through it.
Oscar nominations will be announced on February 2. We’re counting down to the big day by offering some hard-hitting analysis and incisive opinions on the toughest questions surrounding the nominees. One of the great things about nomination morning is that it never fails to surprise. What strange stuff could we see tomorrow morning?
John:
The Blind Side gets a Best Picture nomination.
Clint Eastwood gets a Best Director nomination instead of Lee Daniels.
“The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart is left off the Original Song list.
Jared:
Oscar sometimes moves in chunks. So, Crazy Heart picks up a Best Picture nomination, and Maggie Gyllenhaal gets a Best Supporting Actress.
Or, similarly, The Messenger picks up a Best Picture, and Samantha Morton gets a Supporting Actress.
Finally, Nine gets a Best Picture nomination.
Well, John worked more of his magic and we found ourselves at a free screening of Invictus. Directed by Clint Eastwood, the film tells the story of Nelson Mandela’s interest in the South African rugby team, specifically in its performance at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, not coincidentally hosted by South Africa. A quick note before getting to our initial thoughts. If you find yourself at a movie, and something amazing or inspiring or whatever happens on-screen, please resist the temptation to clap. The filmmakers can’t hear you. The actors can’t hear you. You know who can hear you? Your fellow audience members.
Brian
I’m generally someone who appreciates the parts of a movie more than the sums, but Invictus is an example of a movie where the sum was greater than the parts. The more I’ve pondered over it since seeing it, the less I’ve liked it. Overall, it was entertaining and I’d probably recommend it to most folk. So many of Eastwood’s choices — focusing on the security detail, using too much slow motion, beat-you-over-the-head preaching — left bad tastes in my mouth that if you give me a couple of months I’ll probably be actively rooting against it at the awards show. Kind of like the anti-Rachel Getting Married.
Jared
I thought the first third of Invictus was really solid. A bit heavy-handed, sure, but Eastwood knows how to go for the incredibly low-hanging fruit of heart-tugging eye-watering melodrama. Plus, I mean, Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Soon, however, the film became repetitive and increasingly filled with poorly thought out sports scenes. And an impressively buff Matt Damon doesn’t really have a place in the movie. I will say, though, it is the best rugby movie I’ve ever seen.
John
Invictus is classic Eastwood: corny, horrible dialogue, utter lack of nuance, and an over-reliance on cinematic scenes that don’t advance the film as a whole, but damned if its spirit doesn’t win you over. Hollywood has dished out schlock since its inception and the Academy has lapped it up for nearly as long; I think if I’m going to consume said schlock it may as well be from its master. Eastwood just gets it to feel right even as I’m rolling my eyes.
Clint Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski (from Gran Torino) may be the manliest character ever caught on film. Sure, guys may aspire to be suave like Bond, badass like Bourne, and lethal like Bruce Lee or Rambo, but deep down we know those are unrealistic exaggerations. Fun to be for a day, but maybe not much longer. Kowalski, though, is what we all wish and fear we might be when we reach seventy. Kowalski’s material possessions exemplify masculinity. He has a garage full of tools he’s accumulated over his lifetime, a more realistic version of what MacGyver represents. He’s got the cool car, obviously, which he keeps in immaculate condition. Comfortable around guns, he saw combat and received a medal, something which most guys wish they could say they’ve done, even if they have absolutely no desire of actually doing it. Most of all, he doesn’t take nothing from nobody. He is his own man, unencumbered by anyone and certainly not by whatever these things you call “feelings” are. If he wants to spend his life on his front porch, drinking PBRs (of course) by the six-pack, hurling racial epithets when mere grunting isn’t an effective enough method of communication, he damn well will. Kowalski isn’t cynical, exactly, just entirely comfortable with where he is and entirely unwilling for anyone to suggest otherwise. And, of course, has a faithful dog by his side. But as the pinnacle of masculinity he is, naturally, the ultimate joke.
The actual movie is almost irrelevant here. Gran Torino is a pretty standard tale of neighborhood justice – bad guys start picking on the good guys, main character learns something about himself, someone has to make a sacrifice. Nothing particularly new or exciting. The non-Eastwood actors were seemingly chosen to contrast the awesomeness of the man. And it involves Hmong community probably because they provide an easy group for Eastwood to slur an entertainingly large number of different ways, but don’t have vocal enough support to affect the box office.
No, Gran Torino is pretty much entirely about Eastwood tearing through every scene. I’m still not entirely sure how he manages to be so incredibly over the top (to the point where a mere grunt elicited raucous laughter in my theater) and yet have the film maintain some semblance of gravitas. The concept is hard to grasp, as all the other actors are serious, the plot is serious, and Eastwood’s character is the most serious of them all, yet he turns out genuinely funny. His Kowalski is cantankerous, curmudgeonly, and ignorant, but also a reminder that as annoying as other people are, it is pretty hard to avoid them. Eastwood single-handedly makes the film worth watching.
I liked that Changeling has a sharp sense of time and place. I didn’t like that it didn’t have a sense of focus or pacing. I think where it unravels is when it tries to do too much; there are plenty of aspects to it that I found admiral but maybe there are just too many aspects.
The root of the story is the disappearance of Christine Collins’s (Angelina Jolie) son, Walter, in 1928 Los Angeles. Months later the LA police return to her a boy that she insists is not actually her son. She then campaigns to force the police to stop dragging their heels and look for her real son while the police fight her back viciously. It’s certainly an emotional story with Christine trying to keep it together while dealing with the loss of her son and seeking justice. I liked Jolie’s performance, which is generally not showy. Christine is a fairly grounded and very strong woman and even in dramatic moments Jolie plays her with some restraint. Of course there are scenes involving emotional outbursts and those mostly felt earned and genuine.
But the film doesn’t stay focused on Christine’s story. Deep into the runtime it takes an abrupt and dark shift to a farm east of the city. Jolie is offscreen for significant periods of time as the investigation into the farm unfolds. I’ll keep it vague until after the jump to avoid spoilers, but this subplot feels like part of a different film. It is still often effective taken on its own, but it’s too involved and developed of a subplot for a film that should really be focused on Christine Collins.
Then the film begins to feel like it’s spiraling out of control. It goes on for way too long, far past what felt like its natural climax. It’s frustrating because the film feels so promising for so long and each of the scenes and story elements usually works on its own, just to discover as the film unfolds that many are wasted.
From an Oscars standpoint, Jolie will likely get a Best Actress nod and it’ll be well-deserved. As I mentioned at the beginning, despite Changeling‘s thematic and story missteps, to its credit it creates a wholly enveloping and consistently interesting environment. Even during the times I felt the story slipping away from me I found something of interest in the setting. A Costume nomination could certainly be in the cards and I would love to see an Art Direction nomination. The sets and the props were my favorite part of the film. Just take in the architecture, trolleys, cars, and time-appropriate props.
Besides directing, Clint Eastwood also contributed the score, nominated for a Golden Globe. I think it succumbs to indie/artsy guitar plucking far too often, a trend I find ever more obnoxious. The Academy loves Clint, but maybe they’ll go for him for Actor in Gran Torino and shut him out for Changeling.
One weird note is that there is a completely superfluous scene about the Oscars in the film. Christine’s coworkers go out to listen to the 1934 Oscar radio broadcast while she hangs back and happily cheers when It Happened One Night is announced the winner (wouldn’t it be something if the audio used in the film is from the actual broadcast; the Academy jealously guards that footage). All I could wonder is if Eastwood was sucking up; at 130 minutes in I was just ready to go.
It won’t be getting Director or Picture nominations and it shouldn’t. Specifics and theories after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
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