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Hereafter

I really wanted to like this, but the parts did not add up to a satisfying sum.

Premise

Telling the story through three characters without any connection aside from death was a problem. The French reporter’s story was the worst because it took too long for her to get to the main point of working on the book about life after death. Plus, there was an imbalance with Matt Damon being the only big name in the movie. I wanted to see more of his story or to get the others into his life more quickly. As is, the other main characters should have been played by big actors, or all three parts should have been B-list actors, so I would have known the story would be spread amongst all three.

Also, all three meeting in Act III was too big a coincidence…actually, three coincidences (Matt leaving San Francisco, the woman appearing at the book show, and the boy being their with his foster parents).

I think this could have been much smoother and more accessible had the woman and twin boys been from the same town as Matt Damon and been in an accident that Damon was also a part of or at least witnessed. As now, the woman would have survived after a near-death experience and one of the twins would have died. With a little tweaking, everything else would have been the same. The point is that the accident at the beginning would have bound the characters in a more engaging manner.

On a separate note, I had no issue believing in the afterlife. It seems most people in the world do believe it in one form or another. However, communicating with the dead is another issue and I feel most others feel the same in disbelieving it or at least suspecting it. So it was weird starting the story with the main character undeniably having the gift of talking to the dead. I saw that as fiction and yet it was treated as 100% normal. It might have been a better story- and more people may have given it a chance- had Matt Damon gained the power after being in the opening accident (in my proposed new angle). The story would have left it open- does he really have the power or is he faking it (albeit to sincerely help people)? His arc could have remained mostly as is, with his brother pushing him to commercialize the power (whether true or not), Damon getting overwhelmed by the demand, and ultimately pushing it aside to find inner peace.

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