Collateral Beauty is much worse than it should be, but not as bad as it seems. That is to say, this is a film that gets in the way of its own potential. I’ll admit, I sat down in the theater not only with extremely low expectations, but ready with preemptive sighs and groans for what I was sure was going to be two hours of precious sentimentality.
I left surprised that I didn’t hate the film, despite that fact that what works in Collateral Beauty is also the source of its downfall. The premise is creative, but the execution farfetched and gimmicky. The cast is so stacked with (over)-qualified actors that their casting borders on excess; the cumulative star-power is almost distracting. And the directness with which the film engages our greatest human concerns is admirable but clumsy.
Will Smith plays a Hitch-era hotshot named Howard, the creative genius at the helm of an innovative marketing firm. Howard gives motivational speeches to his staff with questions like, “What is your ‘why?’” and makes (mostly astute) philosophical observations, like: “Love, Time, and Death…the three things that connect us all. We long for Love, we wish we had more Time, and we fear Death.”
This trite platitude is also the thesis of the film, presented plainly and tidily in the opening scene.
Flash forward three years later. Now Howard is Pursuit of Happyness-era Will Smith, gray and tired and shut down. His young daughter has been dead for two years, which has reduced him to a loner who occupies his time biking around the city, sitting on a bench at the dog park (despite having no dog), and building elaborate, color-coordinated domino structures in his office. His co-workers are worried, not just because he’s their friend, but because he’s also central to their most important client relationships. Their jobs, livelihood, and the company are at stake.
When they realize he’s begun to write letters—not to people, but to the abstract ideas he views as so central to the human experience (the aforementioned Love, Time, and Death)—they decide to intervene. Cue an elaborate plan devised by three of his friends (an underutilized Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, and Michael Peña) to snap him out of his grief and save the company. To explain more would spoil the plot, but I will say that, much to everyone’s surprise, Love, Time, and Death start appearing to the characters in human form (here’s where Helen Mirren, Jacob Latimore, and Keira Knightley come in).
The cast is excellent; that’s no surprise. Director David Frankel (most well-known for The Devil Wears Prada) treats his actors equally, and their unremarked upon racial diversity (four of the eight leads are people of color) is refreshing. Unfortunately, as a whole, the performances are more serviceable than inspired. Will Smith is believably broken down, and his brief flashes of anger are both authentic and dangerous, but too much of his time is spent pedaling around in the dark. Winslet, Norton, and Peña demonstrate the appropriate amount of vulnerability and concern, but are mostly shown conspiring about how to help Howard. Naomie Harris, who plays the leader of Howard’s grief support group, is the real standout. Behind her eyes is a mixture of hope and suffering, and the best parts of her performance are unspoken.
However, the most notable casting choices are those of Helen Mirren, Jacob Latimore, and Keira Knightley, as Death, Time, and Love, respectively. And not just because of the widely disparate credentials they bring to the roles (Ms. Mirren is a Dame and Academy Award winner; Mr. Latimore is relative newcomer with a hip hop album), but because of their race, gender, and age. I’d be interested to hear the reasoning behind decision to portray Death as old, white, and female, Time as young, black, and male, and Love as young, white, and female. Even if these characteristics were happenstance, the implications remain and are interesting to unpack.
Surprisingly, the personification of each of these abstracts avoids clichés, and is thus one of the films strongest elements. Helen Mirren as Death is mischievous, eccentric, direct, and even cheerful. Jacob Latimore as Time is angry, accusatory, rebellious, and indignant. And Keira Knightley as Love is weeping, apologetic, desperate, and sincere. I felt myself wishing for more of each, because theirs were the scenes that felt real and surprising.
Unfortunately, whoever was in charge of the story is so concerned with the plot and its outcomes fitting into a tidy pattern that they undermine what seems to be the very point of the film—that no matter your circumstances, you can’t let what’s happened to you keep you from engaging with the messy world and people around you. Instead of trying to create a feel-good (but “deep”!) holiday movie, they should’ve let Collateral Beauty be what it really is—a fairy tale (and one that is more Grimm than Disney). Consider it: Happy man has daughter who is the light of his life. Daughter dies and happy man becomes sad man. Man is visited by Death, Time, and Love. Man learns an important lesson and changes his ways. It’s classic.
Which is partially why the setting is such a misstep. “New York City, Christmas-time, ad agency” feels like lazy Hollywood shorthand for “This is the story of a regular guy you should care about.” But this attempt at universality backfires, and instead Howard is an example of a sad man rather than an actual sad man. Had the setting been more specific (and maybe even a little absurd), the resulting film would’ve been less cliché. The score is another contributor to this problem. It’s relentlessly sentimental, swelling at all of the “moving” moments, intent on underlining what we’re already feeling in bold.
Collateral Beauty left me in sighs, but they derived neither from being deeply moved nor thoroughly disgusted. Rather, I sighed the way a teacher does for her underachieving student, that kid with so much potential but so little focus, the kid who always takes the easy way out but who you can’t help but root for anyways. Collateral Beauty isn’t an unlikable film, but it’s a frustrating one. The themes of Death, Time, and Love that could’ve been rendered with such subtlety and nuance are instead hammered into us, through everything from the promotional material, to the heavy-handed domino motif, to explicit lines of dialogue, to the title itself. The eight extremely capable leads are given very little to do, and the filmmakers aim their high-concept plot at the heart when they should’ve been aiming at the soul (or at least the brain).
At one point, a character says to an estranged lover, “I wish we could be strangers again,” and that’s how I feel about Collateral Beauty. I’ll sit back down when the filmmakers are ready to suggest a message, not deliver it. Until then, if you really want to engage with Death, Time, and Love, go see Nocturnal Animals.
Rachel Woldum is barista and bartender currently living in Minneapolis. An MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University, Rachel also writes a TV column for Southern Minnesota Scene, and develops comic book scripts for Cartoon Studios.
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