“We’re here to connect. Love, time, death. Now these three things connect every single human being on earth. We long for love, we wish we had more time, and we fear death.”
These are the reasons, the “big Why,” which motivate and navigate people towards the good life, according to Howard Inlet (Will Smith) an executive of a successful advertising company. The aim of their company, ironically, is to persuade people that the products they advertise can help them achieve their goal to connect and fulfill their “Why.” However, understanding human fulfillment cannot mitigate the excruciating pain of losing his six-year-old, which thrusts Howard into severe depression, disconnecting the once ebullient businessman from his work, wife, and friends.
We don’t witness the passing of his daughter or Howard’s immediate reactions to it; instead we find out through private conversations shared between Howard’s friends and co-workers, Whit (Edward Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet), and Simon (Michael Peña) who are also concerned with the the fact that Howard, two years after the tragic event, is still unable to process his grief and re-enter life. Howard’s emotional and psychological decline has been detrimental to himself, his friends’ lives, and the company which Howard especially neglects in his sorrow. With a business deal on the table that could salvage the dying company, which also inconveniently requires Howard’s approval to be executed, his co-worker friends decide to hire a private investigator to see if Howard’s decision-making had been compromised by his psychological state to nullify the need for Howard’s professional approval.
After discovering that Howard had been writing letters to Love, Time, and Death, they decide to (also) hire three thespians (Keira Knightley, Jacob Latimore, and Helen Mirren respectively) to play out the roles of each abstraction and visit Howard to help him see how pervasive beauty is despite pain and tragedy. Their hope is that by engaging Howard’s peculiar coping mechanism they can help him process his grief and also capture him on video engaging imaginary figures thus demonstrating that he is psychologically inept to make any decision in regards to the company. I know – some friends!
Collateral Beauty’s plot is as slow as it is underdeveloped: since the film never exposes us to the tragedy that sets the plot into motion, we cannot appreciate the emotional impact that comes when the pace of the plot picks up in scenes of resolution. For example, there is the scene in the boardroom where Howard comes to realize that in his grief he has disconnected from everyone which consequently required everyone to disconnect from the important things in their lives to restore Howard. Unfortunately, we cannot appreciate the gravitas of Howard’s acceptance of loss and willingness to move on because we don’t really know his pain; we haven’t been given enough back-story to understand why his friends would go to such lengths to help their friend or appreciate Howard’s remorse over the collateral damage his neglect of others has caused. In the moments where I did feel connected to the story and thus emotionally impacted, it was not because I felt the weight of the narrative, but rather because of the way the cinematography captured the emotions each actor was able to embody through their facial expressions. If the plot doesn’t make you feel pain and longing, the various close-up shots of Will Smith’s forlorn brow or Hellen Mirren’s inquisitive gaze will.
I was expecting Collateral Beauty to feel more like a modern iteration of A Christmas Carol, with a story set during Christmas with a rich protagonist disengaged from everything in his life, who is visited by three apparitions that re-orient the protagonist towards a life of considering others. About half-way through the film, however, Collateral Beauty felt more like a cinematic theodicy, or at least an attempt to be a cinematic theodicy. Comparing it to the book of Job helped me identify where Collateral Beauty fell short of what it could have been.
Job has remained a proactive, spiritual treasure for so many generations because it both plumbs the depths of the irrationality of suffering while also daring to probe the supernatural for answers; it is a story that is both authentic and paradoxical. In Job we are rooted in the title character’s unmerited suffering and his attempts to process his grief. However, we are also transported to the spiritual realm and made audiences of God’s response to Job to find spiritual answers for the poignant questions suffering invites. Interestingly, part of the answer that the book of Job offers is that there is “collateral beauty” in creation; life is teeming with beauty and purpose and is ultimately oriented to the incomprehensible, beautiful and just will of the Divine.
While the film has its Job moments, it fails to narratively root us in human suffering, substitutes philosophical answers for pseudo-psychological ones, and turns supernatural intervention into emotional manipulation. Collateral Beauty is a fake flower: it is pleasing to the eye, but fails to engage our other “senses” because it doesn’t have the earthy origin that allows for spiritual delights.
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