When a successful New York advertising executive suffers a great tragedy he retreats from life. While his concerned friends try desperately to reconnect with him, he seeks answers from the universe by writing letters to Love, Time and Death. “These three things connect every single human being on earth. We long for love. We wish we had more time. And we fear death,” says director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada). Collateral Beauty is about finding your way back to life and love in the wake of unspeakable loss.
The movie is set amidst the warmth, energy and often bittersweet notes of the holiday season in New York City. “The way you see the world, the way your heart opens and the way you relate to people after a tragedy can be very beautiful,” says screenwriter Allan Loeb (21), who is also one of the film’s producers. For Loeb, Collateral Beauty began as the germ of a concept that grew to capture his imagination until it could not be denied. “It came together piece by piece over a long period of time as I wrote other movies and worked on other things,” he recounts. “It was a little story in my head that kept nagging at me, about a man who writes letters to abstractions like time, love and death, and why would he do that?”
The key character, Howard (Will Smith), starts off as a passionate, dynamic individual, the head of his own company, for whom the words time, love and death once represented powerful marketing tools – great motivators. But after his six-year-old daughter succumbs to a fatal illness, casting Howard emotionally adrift, these concepts take on a larger meaning. Increasingly withdrawn from human contact, the only communication Howard now initiates are the angry, accusatory letters he writes to Love, Time, and Death. “He’s struggling with big, philosophic questions and looking to the universe for answers,” Frankel says. “Like a modern-day King Lear, you might say, he’s howling at the gods.”
His closest colleagues and confidantes – Whit (Edward Norton – Birdman), Claire (Kate Winslet – The Reader) and Simon (Michael Peña – The Martian) – can’t “reignite” him, try as they might. That’s when an unexpected encounter Whit has in casting a commercial leads him to a small group of struggling actors – Amy (Keira Knightley – The Imitation Game), Brigitte (Helen Mirren – The Queen) and Raffi (Jacob Latimore – The Maze Runner) – who assume the roles of Love, Time and Death. The cast also includes Naomie Harris (Spectre) as the orchestrator of a self-help group for parents who have lost children.
The very thought of losing a loved one at any age is hard enough to bear, let alone a child, which would shake the very foundations of a parent’s life. And so it is here, when uber-successful advertising guru Howard shuts down after his daughter’s passing. Collateral Beauty moves into the realm of fantasy to try to counter Howard’s dreamlike state. While having actors attempting to spark Howard may work on one level, on another I found it a bridge too far. The concept of coping with grief is an important one for cinema to explore. To do so with heart and soul is expected. Its treatment here is decidedly quirky, which others may warm to more than I did.
With so many big names to focus upon each play smaller roles that in any other film could have been developed in and of themselves. But in this case we get a taste of each and there were certainly some I would have appreciated getting to know better. Keira Knightly was probably the most interesting of the lot. Her character is an immediate draw-card.
So, how does one cope with the death of a child? I am none the wiser after seeing Collateral Beauty, which is a brave endeavour that failed to ignite, as far as I am concerned. Rated M, it scores a 5½ to 6 out of 10.
Director: David Frankel
Cast: Will Smith, Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren
Release Date: 12 January 2017
Rating: M
Alex First
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television