By Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle
That Clint Eastwood has become a great filmmaker is something few would contest at this point, and yet the nature of his greatness is as surprising as the fact it’s little understood. You can talk about the pristine technique — the new film, “Hereafter,” provides lots of examples. But what’s much more fascinating and enriching is Eastwood’s Olympian vision, the films’ sympathetic and all-encompassing understanding of the pain and grandeur of life on Earth.
This vision is consistent in Eastwood’s late work, no matter who is doing the screenwriting, and it boggles the mind to realize that this is coming from a guy who, until he was about 60, was best known as an action hero. Make no mistake, Eastwood’s directorial output, from “Mystic River” on, constitutes the 21st century’s first cinematic marvel, and “Hereafter” is among the best things he has ever done.
Like Alejandro Inarritu’s “Babel” and Wayne Kramer’s “Crossing Over,” “Hereafter” is an attempt to convey the bigness of life though a story involving disparate characters in different parts of the world. All three movies are responses to the interconnectedness of the modern world, but “Hereafter” is by far the most successful, partly because it has the best screenplay — by Peter Morgan (“The Queen”) — and partly because it has a director who understands the difference between important and self-important.