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GOODWILL HAUNTING
CLINT EASTWOOD
AND MATT DAMON
TAKE A TRIP TOWARDS
THE AFTERLIFE
WITH HEREAFTER
pening with a spectacular Onine-minute tsunami sequence
in Indonesia, Hereafter clearly represents a major departure for director Clint Eastwood
paired for the first time with British screenwriter Peter Morgan.
Eastwood, 80, better known for his gritty urban dramas and police procedurals across more than 30 films, and Morgan, currently master of the biopic (Frost/Nixon, The Queen, The Damned United) have concocted an ambitious, interlinking tale connected to the afterlife.
Co-starring Matt Damon (playing George), Cecile De France (Marie), Bryce Dallas Howard, Jay Mohr, Marthe Keller and Lewisham-born twins George (Marcus) and Frankie McClaren, Hereafter’s action moves between Hawaii, Paris, San Francisco and London.
According to Damon: “The ideas in this movie are universal. It deals with questions that people are grappling with all over the world and always have been and always will be. So, I think it’s great that it’s a big story with such an international feel, and that we went to all these different countries to capture that.”
Because the action would be interconnected, Eastwood worked with production designer James J. Murakami to ensure the audience
would know where they were at any given time.
“Clint wanted each story to have really unique, identifiable settings,” Murakami says. “So, it was important to capture the modern, sleek look of Paris, and the middle class feel of San Francisco, and then the distressed look of Marcus’s London. The places in many ways mirrored the character whose story is being told.”
To further differentiate the stories, Eastwood and his long-time director of photography Tom Stern AFC ASC utilised the DI process.
“It’s subtle but each city has a slightly different look to reflect what’s happening in each part of the story,” Stern explains.
One critic has noted of Stern’s contribution: “Hereafter... is quiet, gorgeous and contemplative.
Mr. Eastwood’s longtime cinematog- rapher, Tom Stern, composes a world of rich, deep shadows and heavy, saturated colours, making you aware of encroaching darkness, but also of the intense, almost tactile beauty of existence.”
Following a week in Paris, the company moved to London, where UK location manager Martin Joy had secured permission to shoot the flat Jason and Marcus share with their mother at the city’s Chancellor Estates, by the Elephant and Castle.
48 • EXPOSURE • THE MAGAZINE • FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE
Photo: Matt Damon in Hereafter
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