Director’s Cut: Clint Eastwood

By Kelli Korducki

Director’s Cut, Torontoist’s series of TIFF filmmaker profiles, gives you the skinny on some of the legendary directors and more freshly minted masters at this year’s festival.

Eastwood at the gala for Hereafter. Photo by Sam Javanrouh/Torontoist.

Name: Clint Eastwood
Nationality: American
Film: Hereafter
Program: Special Presentations
Born: May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, California
Selected filmography: The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Unforgiven (1992), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Mystic River (2004), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006).

Clint Eastwood is a legend of such magnitude that to describe him in a brief snapshot seems almost crass—yet it’s hard to imagine the octogenarian actor/director/producer/composer taking offence to backwards glances at his esteemed cinematic history, particularly in light of the mortality-driven Hereafter, the director’s latest offering. If thematic implications can be trusted, it appears Clint Eastwood may be feeling contemplative.
As noted in a recent Toronto Sun article, Eastwood made his first TIFF appearance nearly half a century ago to premiere the now classic Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars (1964), in which he starred as a ruthless and nameless cowboy, The Man with No Name. Since then, he’s acted in over forty films and directed thirty-five, won two Academy Awards each in the categories of Best Director and Best Picture—for both 1992’s Unforgiven and 2004’s Million Dollar Baby—and still found the time to dabble in California politics (after Reagan, pre-Ahnold), all the while cementing his legacy as a director of subtle, contemplative dramas.
Hereafter, which debuted at TIFF on September 12, diverges from the director’s consistent yet foolproof formula of heady heartstring ticklers. As the title suggests, the film explores the threshold between life and death and the unfamiliar territory that follows, exploiting the supernatural to grapple with life’s impermanence. Whether it works is left for interpretation.
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