Late Eastwood #1: Hereafter
A few words about seeing light
Welcome to Late Eastwood, my tour through the late work of the still very much alive Clint Eastwood. This is a tour through the prolific director’s films since 2010, a period of his career with which I’m almost wholly unfamiliar. With his new film, Juror #2, on the horizon, I will be combing though the films leading up to it, so I can learn a bit more about what motivates a 94-year-old to keep practicing his art. These posts are for paid subscribers only, so you know what to do.
Hereafter is the last new Clint Eastwood film I’ve seen, and that was 14 years ago now. I was originally intending to skip this one, to start with J. Edgar, his biopic of the FBI director, but thinking on it, I decided it would be best to start with the movie that, in a way, turned me off of Eastwood, that kept me from following his late output. The truth is, Eastwood’s been in the “late” period of his career for a very long time. What is Unforgiven if not a late film? But there’s something, to my eye, having not even seen the films, that happens to his work in the 2010s. We really are in the late period now, and it seemed fitting to start the exploration with a look at a film very literally about death, giving myself an opportunity, perhaps, to reevaluate.