Before and After (1996)

If there ever was a movie where you could discuss the pro and con of what was said and done and by whom, this be the one to the textbook. What would you have done is the question and then choose a side and here we go. The arguments for or against what these characters did or didn't do are meaningful and full of depth and remain even closer to real life than one would admit. The opposing points of view and the beliefs behind them remain fascinating. Mother, daughter, father and son each had their own take on what should be done and why. If you don't care to join in and play the different roles, then sit back and let this movie have its way with your emotions. It will push and pull on you, love and hate will surface as well as right or wrong and good and bad. College classrooms would find this good for debate purposes bar none. Popcorn or sunflower seeds recommended to keep the fingers busy plus a refreshing drink. Enjoy

Fmovies: Reading the majority of comments about "Before and After," I wanted to guess the commentators'ages (mostly in their twenties - thirties?) and to assume that they were either childless or had never raised teenagers. As announced by the young voice when the movie opens, this is a story of daily life that was changed in an instant, and that afterwards, the family was never the same again. It sounds like a tautology, but most of our lives are not interesting enough as material for the movies, and it is a rare script and director that can show "daily life" and have anyone praise its results. Ordinary dialogue, too, is a challenge, because people as a rule don't speak in great cadences. Moreover, if one is looking at the movies today, anything that is not "family drama" contains a volley of expletives that passes for dialogue. So it is understandable that this movie did not rate high in the minds of the x-generation.

As a parent of teens, however, I found the film quite true to life. It's basically about how parents respond to a dire family crisis and how they must adjust to each other as a unit. We see how the son, as played by young Ed Furlong, is affected by the shock of this event. As an actor, his fine portrayal as the sensitive young writer in "Grass Harp" is a parallel role and should be mentioned. As for the parents, Streep was drawing on her experience as a mother of three and was not "acting" in the way one saw her in her obviously great roles, such as "Sophie's Choice" or "Out of Africa." This was a subtler challenge for her. With Neeson, also a father in real life, he chose to portray the father as impulsive, strong and the embodiment of unconditional parental love. I felt that the parents were meant to be somewhat opposites and complementary-- she contemplative, more intellectual and sympathetic, he aggressive, protective and reactive.

Some viewers were disturbed by the unbalanced and unsympathetic portrayal of the dead girl's mother and the dead girl herself. How could it be otherwise and not be told from Jacob or Jude's point of view? This is not "Rashomon" -- we were not meant to have different points of view defended. However, the very casting of the mother and of the girl friend as being less well educated and of a different "class," was obvious, and another "true thing" that often happens in families. Here, however,it is not the parents' disapproval that is important, but how they respond to their son's guilt.

Some viewers might say that my comments betray my being manipulated. Well, all viewers are being manipulated in any movie, and a measure of whether we like the movie or not, is whether we resent or do not mind being manipulated as the writer and director wished us to be. If someone watched this movie hoping for the suspense of a crime drama, they won't like it. If someone watched this hoping for dramatic acting as in the Oscar-winning roles of Streep or Neeson (I would have cited "Lamb" as his earliest and strongest), then they also would be disappointed. And if someone were watching this expecting something other than a presentation of daily life, then they would also be disappointed, because they would have found it flat, bland, even trite- until something dramatic, like the accident on Jacob's fateful date-- happens to jolt its members out of their routine and their complacency. That is what this movie is about.

I found myself a

The shortcomings of the United States' justice system are explored in "Before and After". A youth (Jacob) is fighting with his girlfriend and she accidentally falls on a jack which kills her. The family grapples with whether or not to tell the truth not only the courts but to their own lawyer and police officer who is a family friend. Is it morally right to tell the truth that the girl's death was nothing more than a mere accident and hope that it will be believed or should a story be made up in the hopes that Jacob will be let off since the police have no evidence. (The father, in the interests of protecting his son, wiped the jack clean of the blood).

We learn of course, that everyone is against the mother and son who want to just tell the truth, especially the lawyer who is interested more in getting Jacob off the hook, no matter how much of a story he has to invent, how many lies he has to tell, how many people's characters he has to besmirch. The moral structure behind the criminal justice system in the U.S. is uncovered as not one that seeks what is right or true but what kind of entertaining bi-polar battles between the defense and the prosecution can be unleashed in a furious game of words.

While the theme of the film is compelling, the production standards are low. This seems more like a made-for-TV movie. With big guns like Liam Neeson and Meryl Streep you'd expect better acting. While Streep's performance is okay, Neeson seems like not the best choice for this role. Also, the actor playing the second dark-haired lawyer seems too clownish for his role. Surprisingly, I found that the young actors were the strongest. The actors playing the two children, especially "Jacob" were extremely skilled.

Before and After fmovies. A well-off family suffers a crisis when their teenaged son is accused of killing a girl he was dating.

The plot develops as expected, with the police suspicions wearing away at the parents' denial, especially the father's.

I found the film's dialogue annoying, the characters unlikable, and I was totally surprised that Streep and Neeson would appear in it.

Not recommended unless there's nothing else to watch or you don't mind watching a film while in a state of continual annoyance.

This is an all too common problem: someone somewhere convinces bona fide movie stars, in this case Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson, no less, to appear in a feature film that, without movie star names attached, would have ended up as made for TV. This is a weak script with bad, predictable dialogue - very disappointing with such a cast. With some reworking, it might have been a very powerful family story, perhaps never as compelling as Ordinary People, for instance, but better than it was.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Dolby Digital

A middle-class New England family is forced to confront a range of difficult issues when the eldest child (Edward Furlong) is accused of murdering his girlfriend (Alison Folland).

Barbet Schroeder's earnest drama looks and feels like a big-screen TV movie, toplined by A-list stars and filmed with professional elegance on wintry New England locations. Schroeder struggles to avoid melodrama and mawkishness, resulting in a lack of tension, as parents Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson become torn between protecting their son and telling the truth about his possible involvement in Folland's death. Frustrated lawyer Alfred Molina makes the point that 'truth' has little or no bearing on the criminal justice system, where defence and prosecution teams become engaged in brinkmanship designed to sway the jury one way or another. Ted Tally's screenplay makes a number of similar points, but the narrative begins to drift around the halfway mark and never really recovers. Some will be won over by the cast and production values, others won't be so forgiving.