There is perhaps no greater mystery than what happens to each of us after we die, and in a healthy family, perhaps no greater love than that between its members. Two new films of uncommon depth and emotional power tackle those issues and are arriving in theaters this week, as director Clint Eastwood teams up with Matt Damon to explore the Great Beyond in “Hereafter” and Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell deliver performances that might set the standard for this year’s Oscar gold in “Conviction.”
“Hereafter” applies “Crash” and “Babel” school of storytelling, interweaving the stories of three distinctly different people in different parts of the globe in an intricate fashion. The film kicks off with a bang as Marie (played with a touching sense of fear and wonderment by French actress Cecile de France) is knocked out by the notorious Indonesian tsunami of 2004 before springing back to life and finding herself haunted by the visions she had while unconscious.
Marie’s a newscaster and is expected to keep a level-headed scientific mindset, but she is soon obsessed with her quest to figure out what happened and risks losing her reputation, career and relationship. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a lonely man named George (a surprisingly vulnerable Damon) struggles to ignore the psychic abilities that have haunted him since he nearly died in a childhood accident.
And in London, a 12 year old boy named Marcus ( Frankie McLaren, in a heartbreaking debut) is already living a tough life, with his mother a hopeless junkie and no dad in sight. When his beloved twin brother is killed in a tragic accident, he’s left seemingly alone in the world and desperately seeks to learn what happened to his brother after death.
Writer Peter Morgan (“The Queen,” “Frost/Nixon”) has created an original work that easily matches and perhaps surpasses his prior Oscar-nominated scripts. The way he handles the age-old questions of the afterlife strikes an audacious balance: he doesn’t embrace or cast aside any particular faith’s answers, yet he still finds a resolution that should be satisfying to anyone of any belief background.
And when the story strands come together, Morgan and Eastwood forgo the expected, walloping “Holy cow!” moment at the end. Rather, the fact that the twists are subtly surprising rather than shocking is in itself after a decade in which it seems more and more heavy dramas seek to hammer viewers over the head with heavy-handed showmanship.
“Conviction,” meanwhile, tells a powerful story on a more earthbound level. Based on the true life story of how a small-town waitress named Betty Anne Waters (played by Swank) went back to school and earned everything from her GED to a law degree in order to save her brother Kenny (Rockwell) from an unfair life prison sentence, it is propelled by gritty sense of the can-do American spirit and the universal power of family ties.
Betty and Kenny grew up in a highly dysfunctional home and indulged in numerous forms of delinquent behavior as children before Betty matured into married life and Kenny continued his hard-partying ways. But when a local woman is brutally murdered, Kenny is called in for questioning before being set free due to a lack of evidence.
He is arrested two years later, however, and subjected to a trial in which he is convicted based on a nasty stream of testimony from an array of witnesses. Betty swears she will fight to get him out, starting a grueling 18-year journey in which the small-town waitress earns her law degree and then teams up with famed lawyer Barry Scheck (yes, the DNA expert from the OJ Simpson trial) to plead for the admission of DNA evidence.
It may appear that the entire story was just revealed, but there’s a whole lot more going on in “Conviction.” This is one of those tales where the truth is stranger than fiction, and a gritty tale of rough people in tough times in an often-overlooked corner of America.
Director Tony Goldwyn and writer Pamela Gray have created a film that, like “Hereafter,” wrestles with big issues in a smart fashion, and which also employs subtlety throughout before reaching a cumulative powerhouse ending.
But it’s with the actors that “Conviction” really scores its points. Swank may be one of the few actors in Hollywood history to have won two Oscars, but her performances in “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Million Dollar Baby” were so hard-edged that she was more impressive than relatable. Here, she finds a warmth that has eluded her work thus far.
But Rockwell burns through the screen with a performance that combines rock-star charisma with an unpredictable violent streak crossed with quiet despair. And Juliette Lewis (a past Oscar nominee for “Cape Fear”) might just win the supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal of a slimy white-trash woman who proves to be way more trouble than Kenny ever expected.
Both films add to an impressive slate of fall releases, including “The Town” and “The Social Network,” that are proving that audiences are craving intelligent stories with great performances. Sure, “Jackass 3D” might have set box-office records this past weekend, but “Hereafter” and “Conviction” will have a far more lasting impact on viewers’ minds and spirits.
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