rating: *****
the story: Roman and Jewish adoptive brothers clash.
what it's all about: Exactly a year to the day of my last review (read it here), I feel compelled to write about Ben-Hur (2016) again, with very much revised thoughts.
Previously I was very much caught up in the film's history, and even clear associations with Star Wars, and yet the film itself, as I admitted in my closing thoughts, would maybe require more time to process. I can see now where I wasn't even particularly fair in what I did say about it, and so the time has come to try this again. Part of the problem, I think, was at the time I really hadn't attempted too many movie reviews, the way I'd already been writing book reviews over at Goodreads. I hadn't yet allowed myself to process the whole thing. With books, it's almost as important to write about why a book is important as it is to write about the book itself. There are fewer chances of other readers coming across the same books, these days, than there are viewers of the same movies, and it's easier to suggest a movie than it is a book, because it takes less time to consume. A book is a massive commitment. There are some fast readers, and some voracious readers, but there are also a great many more books out there than movies, across a huge range of topics. If it's not a bestseller or a classic, the odds are very small most readers will ever come across the same books even close associates have experienced, and even then the way the brain processes books is different than the way it processes a movie.
All of that is to say, although movies are common currency, they have also, in the accumulated history of them to this point, become easier to dismiss. They're cheaper now than ever, so it's very important to be precise about how you talk about them. The more someone hears about one, or the less, or what they hear regardless, it defines whether or not they will bother to spend even a little time on it, much less give it a fair shake, because the common currency is fast becoming the same as books, the more popular the better, or the more dedicated the following, no matter how small, equally the better. And this has become a rapidly codified rule in the current blockbuster age. The last thing anyone cares about is pedigree, much less quality. Value is in the eye of the restless beholder.
Ben-Hur evokes as much its namesake predecessor now as it does Gladiator, the 2000 epic that won Best Picture at the Oscars. Although there are a lot of reactionaries who've begun to dismiss it as so much hollow entertainment (surely an irony for such a film), it has long maintained a place among my personal favorites. At its heart, it tells much the same story as Ben-Hur of any iteration: two men compete out of pride for the glory of Rome. In Gladiator it's an emperor and a general, in Ben-Hur a Jewish prince and his adoptive Roman brother. The general and prince are both cast aside and must claw their way back, their rivals risen in their stead. But where Gladiator rests on masterful performances from Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix, Ben-Hur relies on far less tested shoulders in Jack Huston and Toby Kebbell.
My previous review, I didn't even mention Kebbell's name. I retroactively included it in the labels, as I became more aware of his presence in films that interest me. In a review I did a little later, for A Monster Calls, just two months later, I realized the mistake I'd made. He was also a standout element of Fantastic Four (2015), and if I went back and analyzed his appearances in other movies I've seen, I'm sure my appreciation would only grow. He may not be a known commodity outside of Hollywood itself, but Kebbell has more than proven his worth on the screen. He certainly pulls his weight as Messala, the wayward brother. Huston does in the title role as well. They are reasons all by themselves to watch. Morgan Freeman as Ben-Hur's benefactor, Rodrigo Santoro as Jesus, and even the usual depiction of Pontius Pilate by Danish actor Pilou Asbaek (you can find him in Game of Thrones, too, and that seems just about right).
I wrongly suggested, previously, that Santoro's Jesus feels out of place. This is a crucial element of the movie, and even the movie's ending, as Ben-Hur and Messala finally put their bloody differences aside. What's so clever about this story is that it plays right into the Hollywood wheelhouse, or as Gladiator so boldly stated, "Are you not entertained?" If there weren't such a gulf between mainstream and Christian audiences today, Ben-Hur would once again have been a rousing success. I have no doubt about that. It's the first historical epic since Gladiator to realize what made Gladiator such a big hit, something A Knight's Tale tried to duplicate soon after but failed because it tried too hard ("He will rock you," its tagline, is all you need to know about that), that in order to make history truly relevant, you have to connect it to the present. If anything, entertainment has become even more of a monolith in Western culture, since Gladiator. There was easier, widespread consensus in the 20th century, at least in television, but once Hollywood cracked the Star Wars blockbuster model, beginning at the turn of the century, not only with new Star Wars but Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, massive success, ridiculous success, became so crucial to moviemaking that it's all but flattened the rest of the film industry around it.
And yet, Ben-Hur suggests that entertainment is a mere distraction, a false victory. That's its whole point. The famous chariot race that's been the traditional hallmark and showcase element of the story, that's what it's all about. Freeman's character tells Ben-Hur that if he wants revenge, he has to do it in a way Romans will understand. And once he has defeated Messala, there's a moment where Pilate sort of freaks out, but by the time Freeman converses with him, he correctly identifies Ben-Hur's win as a Pyrrhic victory: all he's done is help everyone lose, because now even the Jews are cheering the games, and no one understands what's really happened except Pilate.
So what about the redemption? Santoro's Jesus is interesting. The first time we see him he's a mere carpenter offering a few observations to Ben-Hur about hate being used as a weapon of oppression. This idea is what really turned me around about this element, and helped deepen my appreciation of the movie itself. In 2016 we hadn't yet developed a culture where hate truly drove the whole agenda. I'm not talking about who was elected US president, but the political reaction, and how it grew and grew, and combined with other movements and started new ones and...it was all about putting up new little barriers of hate. The only thing Jesus ever really cared about, and you're dead wrong if you thought it was setting up some new religion, was tearing down barriers. It's a hard thing to accept. His later scenes are more reflective of Gospel material, and as such they're not as important, except to emphasize who exactly that carpenter was, and why his message grows in resonance for Ben-Hur, and why it leads him to an entirely different conclusion than the one he wins in the chariot race.
I'd never quite been impressed with the steep rocky features of Jerusalem in other depictions of Jesus, and yet in Ben-Hur they're unmistakable. There're the flat surfaces of chariot races and the water sequences of the slave galley, and yet when you see what's just on the other side of the street vendors, and the long look down from Golgatha, you realize the extreme vantage points of the landscape. They're hard distances to reconcile. Ben-Hur never sympathizes with the zealots who were the terrorists of their day, and yet when he finds himself branded a criminal, he suddenly understands what it means to hate Romans. Messala feels like an outsider in a Jewish household no matter how warmly he's embraced within it. These are dynamics very much akin to the increasingly frayed social bonds of our present. Once a bond is broken it seems irretrievably lost; trust itself is anathema. All men become cynics. And yet, Jesus sees what true cynicism really looks like, and that is Pontius Pilate, celebrating even in defeat. He suggests that if hate is a blunt weapon, then love is the only real redemption. His sacrifice is the ultimate example. Maybe you need faith to accept that, but then again, Ben-Hur itself is an example of what it looks like without it. It is one big elaborate metaphor, and it always was, and Jesus is included at all because he literally embodied the concept, and died for it, to begin with. That's what it's all about.
It's a big profound story, and this movie version of it is a sensational depiction of it, and I think it will withstand the test of time, no nostalgia needed to prop it up. Even without massive initial success and acceptance, I think it will stand as an enduring testament. In Gladiator there was never any doubt who the hero was, and it's easy to cheer when Russell Crowe wins, even if it ends up becoming a moral victory. You would never for a moment believe that he could reconcile with Joaquin Phoenix. Maybe it takes actors with smaller stature to tell a different ending, to be truly lost in the moment when they finally embrace as brothers again.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Saturday, March 24, 2018
A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)
rating: *****
the story: A U.S. ambassador inadvertently ends up in a stowaway's bid for asylum.
what it's all about: I'm a big Marlon Brando fan. I think you can't possibly appreciate movies as a creative medium without being a big Marlon Brando fan. Not just for a few signature performances (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Godfather), but for the breadth of his career and what he represented and even what he tried to do with the roles he selected. This was a man of great talent who regularly chose projects that challenged the status quo. Late in life he gave up the fight; I think he got tired of fighting somewhere in the '70s, probably when he realized Vito Corleone had actually wiped out everything he'd sought to accomplish, rather than made it, and him, relevant again. So he just started punishing everyone, including himself. And yet his projects, even at that point, remain fascinating, not as spectacles but because he continued his efforts. You can't watch something like The Formula and tell me that isn't true. You can't tell me Apocalypse Now isn't a stinging indictment. You can't tell me The Island of Doctor Moreau isn't one, either. That was the whole point. Sometimes, and really way too often, we let things that are entirely beside the point get in the way of the work itself. It's no one's business how ornery he became onset, later.
And even though I only became aware of A Countess from Hong Kong's poor reputation after watching it for the first time, it's no one's business, today, what people have said about it, negatively. The movie speaks for itself. It's hilarious. It's a goddam classic.
It's also the last movie Charlie Chaplin ever directed. It's a farce, a delicious piece of nonsense. Maybe I found it so easy to love because of Brando, and maybe it's because the theater experience I have is full of farces. And I'd consider A Countess from Hong Kong a natural piece of stage theater. I have no idea if anyone has ever done a stage production of it, but that really, really needs to happen. If you've never seen Noises Off, a 1992 ensemble comedy featuring John Ritter, Carol Burnett, Christopher Reeve, Michael Caine, and others, you really should. I caught up with it because I'd seen a college production, and loved that. In high school I became acquainted with the work of playwright Charlie Schulman (The Ground Zero Club and The Birthday Present, the latter of which I got to act in). The local theater seemed, at least at the time I was attending regularly thanks to school (and later; I saw a production of The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon, most famous for The Odd Couple, so they certainly kept it up), to specialize in this kind of play. The blockbuster stage version of The Producers proved it still had mass appeal, too, even if the second film version didn't seem to back that up. This kind of material is the basis for all sitcoms, too. I'd suggest part of why we take ourselves too seriously today is because comedy has largely taken a backseat to spectacle, and what comedy there is usually spends all its time being political. And yet there's nary a Good Morning, Vietnam that's come out of this period.
Anyway, and it's not really bombshell Sophia Loren in her prime, either. I caught up with her much later in her career, Grumpier Old Men. She's one of those exotic beauty prototypes most recently embodied by Sofia Vergara, who inexplicably (and also tellingly) has never been able to capitalize on her Modern Family breakthrough role with success in the movies. One of her early performances was in the severely underappreciated Big Trouble. I've also seen Loren in Man of La Mancha (1972), which was another movie easily dismissed because its leads (including Peter O'Toole) weren't particularly known for singing. It's certainly fun seeing Loren in her prime.
Considering the massive heat the idea of immigration has received in recent years, something like Countess ought to be reexamined on that basis alone, since that's the heart of the story. Loren's character has ended up marooned in Hong Kong, having ended up exiled during the Russian Revolution. We tend to think of refugees as the classic "huddled masses yearning to be free," and yet the bulk of them have no class status, they're merely displaced peoples seeking safe harbor. Countess is certainly a glamorized version, but sometimes (okay, always?) that's exactly what's needed in order for people to understand what's happening. You can see the success of Black Panther as a cathartic acknowledgment that black peoples have often lacked adequate representation; it's a lightning rod of viewers clumsily acknowledging their own shortcomings if not outright racism, an outlet that makes Africa suddenly relevant to them, even if the movie itself is likely pabulum.
What helps Countess escape such crude analysis? The fact that it really is classic screwball, a last love letter from Chaplin, and another unexpected left turn from Brando (similar to Guys and Dolls). And yet as inexplicable as it seems, every single time someone comes to Brando's cabin door and it sends either him or Loren or both of them scrambling for cover, it's gut-busting. That's classic screwball right there, that's the essence of the art, and the basis for every other element working as well as it does, Brando's exasperation (he does it so subtly you're almost convinced he really is annoyed, which is a fine line few actors can pull off) and of course Loren's increasingly heartbreaking predicament. Brando had done comedy before (The Teahouse of the August Moon, which seems dreadfully unPC by today's standards; Brando plays Japanese), but he's playing at the behest of a master, and he's fully up to the task.
Chaplin himself merely cameos; his son Sydney has a much bigger role, and although he's already older than his father was at the peak of his fame, and he doesn't sport the classic Tramp mustache, you can easily spot the resemblance, and that's a treat, too.
In short, this is another easily recommended movie.
the story: A U.S. ambassador inadvertently ends up in a stowaway's bid for asylum.
what it's all about: I'm a big Marlon Brando fan. I think you can't possibly appreciate movies as a creative medium without being a big Marlon Brando fan. Not just for a few signature performances (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Godfather), but for the breadth of his career and what he represented and even what he tried to do with the roles he selected. This was a man of great talent who regularly chose projects that challenged the status quo. Late in life he gave up the fight; I think he got tired of fighting somewhere in the '70s, probably when he realized Vito Corleone had actually wiped out everything he'd sought to accomplish, rather than made it, and him, relevant again. So he just started punishing everyone, including himself. And yet his projects, even at that point, remain fascinating, not as spectacles but because he continued his efforts. You can't watch something like The Formula and tell me that isn't true. You can't tell me Apocalypse Now isn't a stinging indictment. You can't tell me The Island of Doctor Moreau isn't one, either. That was the whole point. Sometimes, and really way too often, we let things that are entirely beside the point get in the way of the work itself. It's no one's business how ornery he became onset, later.
And even though I only became aware of A Countess from Hong Kong's poor reputation after watching it for the first time, it's no one's business, today, what people have said about it, negatively. The movie speaks for itself. It's hilarious. It's a goddam classic.
It's also the last movie Charlie Chaplin ever directed. It's a farce, a delicious piece of nonsense. Maybe I found it so easy to love because of Brando, and maybe it's because the theater experience I have is full of farces. And I'd consider A Countess from Hong Kong a natural piece of stage theater. I have no idea if anyone has ever done a stage production of it, but that really, really needs to happen. If you've never seen Noises Off, a 1992 ensemble comedy featuring John Ritter, Carol Burnett, Christopher Reeve, Michael Caine, and others, you really should. I caught up with it because I'd seen a college production, and loved that. In high school I became acquainted with the work of playwright Charlie Schulman (The Ground Zero Club and The Birthday Present, the latter of which I got to act in). The local theater seemed, at least at the time I was attending regularly thanks to school (and later; I saw a production of The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon, most famous for The Odd Couple, so they certainly kept it up), to specialize in this kind of play. The blockbuster stage version of The Producers proved it still had mass appeal, too, even if the second film version didn't seem to back that up. This kind of material is the basis for all sitcoms, too. I'd suggest part of why we take ourselves too seriously today is because comedy has largely taken a backseat to spectacle, and what comedy there is usually spends all its time being political. And yet there's nary a Good Morning, Vietnam that's come out of this period.
Anyway, and it's not really bombshell Sophia Loren in her prime, either. I caught up with her much later in her career, Grumpier Old Men. She's one of those exotic beauty prototypes most recently embodied by Sofia Vergara, who inexplicably (and also tellingly) has never been able to capitalize on her Modern Family breakthrough role with success in the movies. One of her early performances was in the severely underappreciated Big Trouble. I've also seen Loren in Man of La Mancha (1972), which was another movie easily dismissed because its leads (including Peter O'Toole) weren't particularly known for singing. It's certainly fun seeing Loren in her prime.
Considering the massive heat the idea of immigration has received in recent years, something like Countess ought to be reexamined on that basis alone, since that's the heart of the story. Loren's character has ended up marooned in Hong Kong, having ended up exiled during the Russian Revolution. We tend to think of refugees as the classic "huddled masses yearning to be free," and yet the bulk of them have no class status, they're merely displaced peoples seeking safe harbor. Countess is certainly a glamorized version, but sometimes (okay, always?) that's exactly what's needed in order for people to understand what's happening. You can see the success of Black Panther as a cathartic acknowledgment that black peoples have often lacked adequate representation; it's a lightning rod of viewers clumsily acknowledging their own shortcomings if not outright racism, an outlet that makes Africa suddenly relevant to them, even if the movie itself is likely pabulum.
What helps Countess escape such crude analysis? The fact that it really is classic screwball, a last love letter from Chaplin, and another unexpected left turn from Brando (similar to Guys and Dolls). And yet as inexplicable as it seems, every single time someone comes to Brando's cabin door and it sends either him or Loren or both of them scrambling for cover, it's gut-busting. That's classic screwball right there, that's the essence of the art, and the basis for every other element working as well as it does, Brando's exasperation (he does it so subtly you're almost convinced he really is annoyed, which is a fine line few actors can pull off) and of course Loren's increasingly heartbreaking predicament. Brando had done comedy before (The Teahouse of the August Moon, which seems dreadfully unPC by today's standards; Brando plays Japanese), but he's playing at the behest of a master, and he's fully up to the task.
Chaplin himself merely cameos; his son Sydney has a much bigger role, and although he's already older than his father was at the peak of his fame, and he doesn't sport the classic Tramp mustache, you can easily spot the resemblance, and that's a treat, too.
In short, this is another easily recommended movie.
Friday, March 23, 2018
2017
Viewed/Ranked
- Logan
- Dunkirk
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
- A Ghost Story
- Justice League
- The Killing of a Sacred Deer
- Star Wars - Episode VII: The Last Jedi
- Wonder Woman
- King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
- Good Time
- The Beguiled
- It Comes At Night
- Blade Runner 2049
- Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
- Roman J. Israel, Esq.
- The Dark Tower
- Atomic Blonde
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
- Baywatch
- Split
- The Bad Batch
- My Little Pony: The Movie
- Spider-Man: Homecoming
- Thor: Ragnarok
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
- A Cure for Wellness
- Alien: Covenant
- American Made
- Baby Driver
- Beauty and the Beast
- Daddy's Home 2
- Darkest Hour
- The Fate of the Furious
- Get Out
- Gifted
- Goodbye Christopher Robin
- The Greatest Showman
- The Hitman's Bodyguard
- Hostiles
- I, Tonya
- It
- Jigsaw
- John Wick: Chapter Two
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
- Kingsman: The Golden Circle
- Lady Bird
- Logan Lucky
- The Lost City of Z
- Molly's Game
- mother!
- The Mummy
- Murder on the Orient Express
- The Only Living Boy in New York
- Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
- The Shape of Water
- T2: Trainspotting
- The Wall
- Wind River
- Wonder
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Collateral Beauty (2016)
rating: ****
the story: A man struggling with the death of his child comes across unlikely support.
what it's all about: In recent years it's become fashionable to put the cart before the horse, when talking about movies. It seems to matter less what a movie actually accomplishes and more a very thin impression of maybe one element (if you're lucky) that becomes distorted in order to form a basis of rejection. Collateral Beauty became an egregious example of this.
For the first decade of the 21st century, Will Smith was virtually untouchable. He made smash hit after smash hit, and critics felt comfortable elevating him from movie star to respected actor. Awards chatter followed him when he chose a role that fit the criteria (Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness). Eventually, though, the streak ended, more or less when he released Seven Pounds in 2008. In a lot of ways, Collateral Beauty is a sequel to Seven Pounds. They both feature Smith as a troubled individual struggling to reconcile himself to a horrible new truth in his life. Actually, even a lot of his blockbuster movies feature him in this mode, notably I, Robot. What Seven Pounds did was scrub away entirely his crowd-pleasing image, so that only the actor remained, and the role and the story around him becomes an outright tragedy. Known for a fairly comedic approach otherwise, this might be considered Smith doing what most comedy actors do, seek out dramatic work now and then, which Robin Williams in particular accomplished to great success. But where Williams waited years to go dark, and met with similar results, Smith attempted it at the height of his success, and plunged right into it. So to see him return to that mode, after a near decade of struggles, is to see that it truly is his choice and not a creative gamble.
After an opening scene that casts Smith in a similar vein to George Clooney in Up in the Air, he virtually retreats into the background, so that for most of the movie, it's not really Smith's movie at all, but the wonderful supporting ensemble's around him. But watching him interact with them, and seeing his relationship with Naomie Harris in particular develop, is to see how all the pieces fit together. The scenes and the arc with Harris in particular evoke Seven Pounds, a movie that builds in its impact until it hits an emotional crescendo, in a way that few movies I've seen have been capable of delivering (Warrior is another, and a true master class in that art).
Now, that supporting cast is involved in an elaborate plot of several layers. Detractors mostly fixated on two of its three essential layers, the ones present in the trailers that became soundly misunderstood. What detractors above all these days love to do is declare something creepy. They did it with that year's Passengers, too, complaining about a plot point that was in fact the entire plot of the movie, that the plot meant to resolve. Smith's business partners, portrayed by Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, and Michael Pena conspire to demonstrate that he's been permanently compromised by the death of his daughter. They hire an investigator to find dirt on him, and discover that he writes letters to Love, Death, and Time. In the original trailer, it seems actual personifications of these concepts visit him of their own accord. Then it was discovered that Norton, Winslet, and Pena hire actors to play them. It seemed like gaslighting. Like Passengers, this is directly addressed in the movie. But the real twist, which is presented so that the characters Smith, Norton, Winslet, and Pena play never find out, is that the actors really are Love, Death, and Time. This essentially makes a complete mockery of that criticism, and exposes it for never having bothered to see the movie.
And it's to the loss of those detractors, because the result are extremely edifying. Few movies, few observers in general, are interested in looking at humanity as a whole these days. They pick elements here and there and offer defensive looks. A movie like Collateral Beauty is designed to shatter these defenses. That may be its greatest accomplishment, or would be if more people were aware of what it actually accomplishes.
Anyway, the storytelling is one thing, but the incredible assemblage of actors is another. Norton's career stalled when his reputation as being troublesome on set overshadowed his talent. In recent years he's had supporting roles that have allowed him to once again assert that talent. In Collateral Beauty he seems to get a chance to be the troublemaker he's perceived to be, and to have a redemptive arc, too. Out of Smith's three business partners he has the biggest role. Winslet and Pena's arcs are more subtle, but equally essential. The three actors, meanwhile, are arguably the best reason to watch the movie. Keira Knightley is another actor who's struggled in recent years to sustain a once-popular career, and seems to have found a role that commentates on perception. Jacob Latimore is the only unknown actor in the ensemble, but is a true revelation. But the real discovery here is Helen Mirren, who finally has a role that pierces her armor, even in a career that has taken every opportunity, likely and otherwise. Which is to say, she finally lets loose and just has fun.
This is a must-see movie for a lot of reasons. Hopefully I've helped clarify that.
the story: A man struggling with the death of his child comes across unlikely support.
what it's all about: In recent years it's become fashionable to put the cart before the horse, when talking about movies. It seems to matter less what a movie actually accomplishes and more a very thin impression of maybe one element (if you're lucky) that becomes distorted in order to form a basis of rejection. Collateral Beauty became an egregious example of this.
For the first decade of the 21st century, Will Smith was virtually untouchable. He made smash hit after smash hit, and critics felt comfortable elevating him from movie star to respected actor. Awards chatter followed him when he chose a role that fit the criteria (Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness). Eventually, though, the streak ended, more or less when he released Seven Pounds in 2008. In a lot of ways, Collateral Beauty is a sequel to Seven Pounds. They both feature Smith as a troubled individual struggling to reconcile himself to a horrible new truth in his life. Actually, even a lot of his blockbuster movies feature him in this mode, notably I, Robot. What Seven Pounds did was scrub away entirely his crowd-pleasing image, so that only the actor remained, and the role and the story around him becomes an outright tragedy. Known for a fairly comedic approach otherwise, this might be considered Smith doing what most comedy actors do, seek out dramatic work now and then, which Robin Williams in particular accomplished to great success. But where Williams waited years to go dark, and met with similar results, Smith attempted it at the height of his success, and plunged right into it. So to see him return to that mode, after a near decade of struggles, is to see that it truly is his choice and not a creative gamble.
After an opening scene that casts Smith in a similar vein to George Clooney in Up in the Air, he virtually retreats into the background, so that for most of the movie, it's not really Smith's movie at all, but the wonderful supporting ensemble's around him. But watching him interact with them, and seeing his relationship with Naomie Harris in particular develop, is to see how all the pieces fit together. The scenes and the arc with Harris in particular evoke Seven Pounds, a movie that builds in its impact until it hits an emotional crescendo, in a way that few movies I've seen have been capable of delivering (Warrior is another, and a true master class in that art).
Now, that supporting cast is involved in an elaborate plot of several layers. Detractors mostly fixated on two of its three essential layers, the ones present in the trailers that became soundly misunderstood. What detractors above all these days love to do is declare something creepy. They did it with that year's Passengers, too, complaining about a plot point that was in fact the entire plot of the movie, that the plot meant to resolve. Smith's business partners, portrayed by Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, and Michael Pena conspire to demonstrate that he's been permanently compromised by the death of his daughter. They hire an investigator to find dirt on him, and discover that he writes letters to Love, Death, and Time. In the original trailer, it seems actual personifications of these concepts visit him of their own accord. Then it was discovered that Norton, Winslet, and Pena hire actors to play them. It seemed like gaslighting. Like Passengers, this is directly addressed in the movie. But the real twist, which is presented so that the characters Smith, Norton, Winslet, and Pena play never find out, is that the actors really are Love, Death, and Time. This essentially makes a complete mockery of that criticism, and exposes it for never having bothered to see the movie.
And it's to the loss of those detractors, because the result are extremely edifying. Few movies, few observers in general, are interested in looking at humanity as a whole these days. They pick elements here and there and offer defensive looks. A movie like Collateral Beauty is designed to shatter these defenses. That may be its greatest accomplishment, or would be if more people were aware of what it actually accomplishes.
Anyway, the storytelling is one thing, but the incredible assemblage of actors is another. Norton's career stalled when his reputation as being troublesome on set overshadowed his talent. In recent years he's had supporting roles that have allowed him to once again assert that talent. In Collateral Beauty he seems to get a chance to be the troublemaker he's perceived to be, and to have a redemptive arc, too. Out of Smith's three business partners he has the biggest role. Winslet and Pena's arcs are more subtle, but equally essential. The three actors, meanwhile, are arguably the best reason to watch the movie. Keira Knightley is another actor who's struggled in recent years to sustain a once-popular career, and seems to have found a role that commentates on perception. Jacob Latimore is the only unknown actor in the ensemble, but is a true revelation. But the real discovery here is Helen Mirren, who finally has a role that pierces her armor, even in a career that has taken every opportunity, likely and otherwise. Which is to say, she finally lets loose and just has fun.
This is a must-see movie for a lot of reasons. Hopefully I've helped clarify that.
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