As an artist and a critic I have advocated for accepting criticism and taking a deeper look into one’s work. I believe this is imperative so one can learn from their mistakes and improve their work in the future. After writing out this whole article it has suddenly dawned on me to review my own short films. Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose. That’s a possibility for later. So in the meantime, to demonstrate the value of introspection, here are my Top 10 biggest mistakes I have made in my time writing film reviews.
10. Small vocabulary issues
I’ve put this point low on the list because I believe for the most part I have a decent vocabulary. However, on occasion, I have slipped up and reverted to overusing simplistic adjectives like “enjoyable” and “entertaining” from review to review. Plus, different things appeal to audiences in different ways, so I probably could’ve explained why I felt the way I did about the picture in cases where I may not have done.
9. My sense of humour
Most if not all of my reviews are written with the intent to critique and inform, but from time to time I’ll try to make the review more entertaining for my readers with a joke or a sentence meant to be humorous. Here’s an example:
“…while the Empire is basically space Nazis…with black Stormtroopers—okay, bad example!” (Sam Tennet Film Reviews – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, 2016)
For a long time I have been in the audiences of online critics such as Doug Walker and Lewis Lovhaug, who use humour in their videos to make their reviews more entertaining and have gained a good deal of success doing it. However, my attempts at humour could be out of place since the rarity of their occurrence clashes with the overall tone of my reviews. In the case of the example I’ve provided, the reader likely is not able to articulate the intended timing of the joke, since it is presented in text and not video.
The choice, then, in future reviews is either to make them more consistently witty within the confines of text or to go for a straightforward serious critical approach. The whole point of my starting this blog was to advertise my understanding of film, so the logical choice would be to go the straight route (even though, as I’ve become aware, not all artists are appreciative of feedback unless it’s 100% positive – probably shot myself in the foot on that one). However, if any of you did get a chuckle out of my little jokes, I appreciate it.
8. The Revenant and its fictional characters
The Revenant (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2015) is supposedly about real life 19th Century frontiersman Hugh Glass, who was left to die by one John Fitzgerald; after being mauled by a bear, Glass pursued his wrongdoers across 200 miles of wilderness in the dead of winter. Now, I didn’t know at the time the historical context behind the film. It portrays Glass as previously having a romance with a Pawnee woman and fathering a son, a child whose existence is fabricated seeing how there is little solid evidence that said son existed. The son is killed in the film, which spurs Glass on to get revenge on Fitzgerald. From a historical perspective it is incorrect and from a storytelling perspective it is unnecessary. Fitzgerald leaving Glass to die is all the reason Glass needs to get revenge. You don’t have to make someone up.
At the end of the film, Glass gets his revenge by fighting with Fitzgerald and throwing him to a band of Arikara who kill him. This went down much differently in real life, a situation that would have been much more interesting in the film. In actuality, Glass tracked Fitzgerald to Fort Atkinson where Fitzgerald was stationed in the army. Glass was allowed to retrieve his stolen rifle from Fitzgerald and warned him not to leave the army under threat of death. Had this been the resolution of the film it could have been poetic, as Glass would leave Fitzgerald to be constantly fighting for his life in a gritty environment just as Fitzgerald left Glass to do on the Wrestle.
Apparently director Iñárritu wanted to make a statement about xenophobia by inserting a half-Pawnee son of Hugh Glass into the film. My response to that is that there are already enough Native American characters in the film with which to address historical racial issues without fabricating a historical figure. But if you wanted to go deeper, if you had a specific purpose for this child character, then might I suggest choosing or creating another story with which to utilise said character? When representing history, no matter how noble your intentions, there is only so much inaccuracy you can afford before said representation is disrespectful, and even that varies depending on where the inaccuracy lies. Besides, we have a word for media where history is distorted for political reasons. It’s called propaganda!
So what does this have to do with my mistakes? Well, it shows my lack of research. It shows I went into a historical drama expecting to learn from it, when in fact details of the lesson were invalid, and I have referred to inaccuracies as if they were real in my own review. And this article shows that, had I researched Hugh Glass at the time, I could have inserted these constructive criticisms and suggestions into the original review.
7. Wonder Woman was not set in World War II
Unlike with The Revenant, the time period of the First and Second World Wars are more familiar to myself, and to most others I should think. I’ve seen documentaries that feature the fashion and uniforms from both the First and Second World Wars and thereby differentiate between the two. And yet in my review of Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017) I originally noted that the story took place in World War II, when in fact the story took place in World War I. The fact that Wonder Woman’s first comic book appearance was in October of 1941, during World War II, must have painted a picture of the film’s historical setting in my mind. Even hearing the soldiers in the picture singing, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” didn’t clue me in, and I know the song was popular during World War I! I messed up a fact I have no business messing up, and since realising this, I have gone back and edited this mistake out of the review.
6. Forgetting Jenny Lind
As you can probably tell, history isn’t exactly my forte. My review of The Greatest Showman (Michael Gracey, 2017) mainly highlighted the historical inaccuracies surrounding the film’s representation of P. T. Barnum. For this I took some time especially to research the subject matter of the film and found that, unlike in the film, P. T. Barnum was an exploitative deceiver and slave-owner. However, I neglected to research other historical figures represented in The Greatest Showman, the most egregiously slanderous representation being that of opera singer Jenny Lind. For one, “Never Enough”, Rebecca Ferguson/Loren Allred’s song as Jenny Lind is not an operatic song, even though in the film they acknowledge she is in fact an opera singer. But then the entire musical uses a contemporary style of music despite its classic modern setting. That’s small potatoes.
Where the real betrayal comes is in the representation of Jenny Lind herself. In real life, with the earnings from the concert tour she performed for Barnum, Lind donated generously to schools and other charities in Sweden and the United States. In the film, she infers a romantic connection with Barnum and tries to ruin his marriage by kissing him in public, despite the fact that the real Jenny Lind had no romantic interest in him. This is how Michael Gracey, Bill Condon and Jenny Bicks choose to preserve her memory and legacy, taking someone truly altruistic and making her out to be some sort of succubus.
My lack of research while reviewing The Greatest Showman caused me to miss these facts, which, had they been put in the original review, would have helped further illustrate how disgustingly awful the film truly is.
5. Comparing Warcraft to Star Wars
At the end of my review of Warcraft (Duncan Jones, 2016) I said the film’s open ending and building up future sequels was comparable to that of Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977), as both were intended to have their full stories told in a series of films rather than one. By that logic you could argue Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003) is also comparable.
So let’s compare. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings were hugely experimental. Star Wars was mostly self-contained, but it left enough loose ends to get its audience interested in what happened next. In the case of Lord of the Rings, you had three movies being made at the same time to cover an epic story based on one of the most popular literary series of modern times. Both film series had groundbreaking special effects for their time and their characters were identifiable, so much so that audiences were hyped for the continuation at the end of the first and second films.
With Warcraft, there is no experimentation. The CGI is good but it’s no more special than any other special effects film today. The story is forgettable, as are the characters, whose personalities all seem to meld into each other. Hell, I can hardly remember any of their names. Plus there are story elements that seem thrown in, unexplained but not mysterious, serving only as fan service for followers of the games. So, when the film leaves loose ends untied at the end, the general film-going audience is left unattached to the characters and uninterested in the continuation.
My fault in this instance was not realising what makes a film sequel-worthy or a film series warranted in the eyes of the audience. I have a better sense now of how a film’s craft, whether in story or mise-en-scène, can make the film important to audiences and significant to culture.
4. Did I give The Neon Demon too much credit?
My review of The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016) was overwhelmingly positive. I appreciate the aesthetics, the will to be daring, the little pieces of foreshadowing and the little cultural references. I saw the film had symbolic value, which I praised, saying it was begging to be dissected, though I didn’t go into much of an analysis. And the reason for that is, at the time, I didn’t understand what the symbols meant – not all of them, at least. However, after looking back, I realise I had complimented aspects of the film that, as a writer, I had no right to commend. And those were the story and the characters.
The performances are not terrible but the whole cast is underacting. The long pauses between lines of dialogue where no action takes place eventually spreads the mood too thin. Elle Fanning’s performance is particularly lackluster – for example, Jesse has no reaction to seeing a jungle cat in her motel room. But in defense of the actress her performance is most likely influenced by the director and she doesn’t have much to work with.
Because, who is Jesse? She’s introverted, seeks to make a living off of her looks, and she likes the moon. Yeah, so do the Spongmonkeys. What are her likes? What are her dislikes? Does she have a hobby? She says she can’t sing, dance or write, but she must have some humanising quality if the audience is to care about her as a protagonist, even if they ultimately aren’t meant to sympathise with her. Perhaps an interest in fashion? A teddy bear from her childhood would suffice. Example: If a teddy were to represent her innocence, the mountain lion (supposedly representing her inner primal vice) could have ripped the teddy apart when it broke into her room, symbolising the corrupting influence eating away at her soul.
The film is intentionally vague about “that thing” that makes one ‘truly’ beautiful. However, to demonstrate this, the film goes to lengths to hide Jesse’s presence in scenes that are supposed to illustrate her X factor, unintentionally making it questionable as to why everyone is so enamored with this girl. Her effect is supposed to be signified in Roberto Sarno’s (Alessandro Nivola) reaction to her walk. But given how Sarno’s character is set up, ignoring the dozens of experienced models surrounding him, at an audition he is supposed to be judging, while folding a cloth handkerchief into a flower shape, the reaction comes off as funny more than anything else.
Also, is Sarno ignoring all these models because he’s self-absorbed or because he is (as the film implies) gay? In either case, this is a professional neglecting his job and it comes off as unbelievable.
I realise that Jesse is supposed to be a blank slate that the other characters mold into vanity, but if you’re trying to make a point of how the modeling industry exploits and consumes models, it would have been far more tragic if the person going through this dark transformation had a personality or humanising qualities or visible skill to begin with.
On top of that Jesse is incredibly stupid. At times she seems oblivious to the idea that people would want to sexualise her as a model or even as a female, especially if they think she’s over 18. I dare say she cannot be that naïve. She cuts her hand on a shard of glass and, instead of calling for first aid, travels all the way to her motel and passes out. Her boyfriend Dean (Karl Glusman) isn’t any better. When Jesse collapses, Dean lays her on the bed and sits there for hours, presumably, without bothering to call for help or dress her still-bleeding wound! He even waits until nighttime to pull the shards of glass from her hand! Jesse’s also a terrible judge of character. She tells Ruby (Jena Malone), a person she has just met, about her deceased parents in confidence, and hours later finds out that Ruby repeated that fact to Sarah and Gigi (Abbey Lee and Bella Heathcote), two more people she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t leave! And then later when Ruby tries to rape Jesse, Jesse stays in Ruby’s house playing dress up for the entire day!
In the scene prior, Jesse hears a girl in the next room being raped and/or killed, and instead of calling the police she calls Ruby for a safe place to stay.
1. Does 911 not exist in this world?
2. Is the audience supposed to believe that models like Candice Swanepoel or Emily Ratajkowski would run out of their apartments without calling the police if they heard their next-door neighbors being murdered?
No amount of vanity can make you that stupid or cowardly. And that’s where this so-called insight into the modeling industry rings false. Yes, the modeling industry is extremely competitive, and I’ll bet there are more than a few superficial a******s in it. I’d imagine that some women in industries like that have to sacrifice their innocence, moral or sexual, in order to succeed. I’m even willing to believe an Elizabeth Báthory-style murder to absorb the beauty of another for oneself. But because these characters are written so one-dimensional, so stupid and so illogical, there’s no illusion and therefor no believing these characters, that anyone could act the way Jesse does. And look, I get that this is supposed to be a symbolic film, but the genius of symbolism is making the product work on both the textual and subtextual levels. These chasms in the story distract from the supposed message of the film about the modeling industry, turning its own argument into a caricature of itself.
This has been more of a revised review of The Neon Demon than it has been an acknowledgment of my mistakes. However, I praised the film’s symbolism without looking deeper to understand it. I took the film’s risks over the competence of the writing. The original review required more time and analysis dedicated to the subject matter. I feel ashamed for suggesting this film to “those interested in cinema”, i.e. film students.
3. Sentence structure/grammatical errors
It’s embarrassing for a writer to make errors in basic grammar. From time to time, I have written very long sentences where I could have conveyed my points and observations through a few shorter sentences. Other times I may have worded my points poorly or could have phrased my meaning better. For example:
“As one other such example, the glowing symbol of the three triangles creating the impression of a fourth, as seen the hallucinogenic runway sequence, could symbolise Ruby, Gigi and Sarah (or perhaps more accurately Roberta, Jack and the Fashion Designer) shaping and surrounding Jesse’s identity.”(Sam Tennet Film Reviews – The Neon Demon, 2016)
“These examples, along with Alex Proyas’ Gods of Egypt (2016) – based on Ancient Egyptian mythology – demonstrate a white protagonist or [most of the] main cast in place of characters that were originally other ethnicities like Asian, Inuit or Arabic, but where the supporting cast or background actors are more accurate or, failing that, diverse.” (Sam Tennet Film Reviews – Cyborgs, Race & Animé Adaptations: Discussing the Justification of Casting in ‘Ghost in the Shell’, 2016)
Sloppy, I know. Plus there is the way I have referenced films in my reviews of other films. For example,
The way I wrote it: ‘Bill Condon’s Beauty and the Beast (2017)’
How I should have written it: ‘Beauty and the Beast (Bill Condon, 2017).
I suppose sometimes I have found it challenging to fit a great amount of detail into a sentence or sentences in a way that is concise, especially when I think of something relevant to add after I have already written the sentence.
Of course sentence structure and formatting is quite different when writing a screenplay, which is meant to convey action and dialogue rather than discourse or meaning. But I’ve written essays during what is about a third of my life now, and the most consistent criticism of my evaluations have been the way I form my sentences and that I need to revise said formation. I do go over my articles after I’ve written them, but still I fall short from time to time. I know full well that (in an article, essay, etc.) I should keep my sentences short so the reader doesn’t get exhausted, and I’ll be sure to remember that principle in the future.
2. Bringing up Mordo’s race
While writing a whole article arguing justification for Scarlett Johansson’s role in Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017) in light of the whitewashing controversy, I failed to mention Tilda Swinton’s role as the Ancient One in Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson, 2017), which had also been caught up in the issue. So, I decided to bring it up in my review of Doctor Strange (although to be honest I feel more like I shoehorned it in). After explaining Marvel Entertainment’s reason for changing the race and sex of the Ancient One and suggesting some alternative solutions they could have taken with regards to their Chinese audience, I briefly brought up the casting of Chiwetel Ejiofor, a British actor of Nigerian descent, as Karl Mordo, originally a white Transylvanian supervillain. My intention was to point out audiences’ double standards of allowing one character to be “racebended” and not another, while also trying to communicate that the race change in and of itself didn’t necessarily matter and the actor did a good job. However I realise that I may have unwittingly thrown Ejiofor under the bus. The whole paragraph was out of place in the review anyway, and mentioning Ejiofor as Mordo did not at all help any of my arguments from the Doctor Strange review or the Scarlett Johansson article. I certainly never intended to alienate Ejiofor, and I apologise for arbitrarily dragging his name into such an ugly issue.
1. Collateral Beauty
My review of Collateral Beauty (David Frankel, 2016), like that of The Neon Demon, was overwhelmingly positive. I complimented the acting, the story, the costumes and the colour grading.
I noticed parallels between the film and A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens, 1843): Howard (Will Smith) is Scrooge, while Amy, Raffi and Brigitte (Keira Knightley, Jacob Latimore and Helen Mirren) are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. Come to think of it that would mean the characters Whit, Claire and Simon (Edward Norton, Kate Winslet and Michael Peña) are the film’s counterparts to Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and so forth, since they are the most in need of the protagonist’s help were he willing to give it. That would also make Madeleine (Naomi Harris) the counterpart to Jacob Marley, a companion from the protagonist’s past (spoilers) who urges him to change his ways and confront his supernatural visitors. You could also compare Howard’s daughter Olivia (Alyssa Cheatham) to Scrooge’s sister Fan, whose death is revealed to be a reason for Scrooge ending up the way he did. Plus, both stories are set at Christmastime.
I suppose comparing the two made me feel smart. The visual style and the musical score had me engaged in the experience. On one occasion I was compelled to defend the film as some dramatic artistic marvel. In my review I said, “The film isn’t necessarily hard to dissect”. Well, it turns out I didn’t try hard enough, because Collateral Beauty is the most repugnant, pretentious, manipulative film I have ever given credence to, and nearly all of its major characters are terrible people.
The story is about Howard, an advertising executive (original (I say sarcastically)) who falls into depression after the death of his 6-year-old daughter Olivia. Two years after this tragedy, having returned to work, his depression causes him to neglect his job and those around him. His friends and employees, Whit, Claire and Simon, find out Howard writes letters to love, time and death, three abstractions that Howard made a philosophical speech about at the beginning of the movie. Unable to reach Howard and fearing the loss of their jobs, the three of them hatch a plan to hire actors – Brigitte, Raffi and Amy – to personify Death, Time and Love and engage with Howard.
So we’ve got some incredibly heavy subject matter in this Christmas film and the plot revolves around friends and strangers deceiving a man who is incredibly unwell. You have to be extremely careful with how you handle this idea and you have to have an extensive, sound understanding of these issues you’re dealing with if you are going to make this project work.
Let’s look at Howard. He looks absolutely destroyed. He spends all his time at work building with dominos. His friends apparently had an unsuccessful intervention for him (which would have been useful to see). Now, I’m not a doctor, so I’m trying to be wary of how I address this. It’s understandable that Howard shuts his friends out. It’s understandable that he feels he can’t go to the support group because facing his problems is difficult for him. There is sympathy to be had for this character.
In this state Howard causes very real detriments to his friends – and Howard knows this. Howard knows that everyone’s jobs at the company are at risk because he’s not doing his job, and when Whit offers a solution he ignores him. Claire covers for him at work, buys him food and pays his rent and he shows no reception to her wanting to help.
You could make an argument that Howard’s apathy is a result of his extensive depression, but said argument is ultimately ruined through the film’s shabby writing and pacing. Jumping ahead, after Whit’s scheme with the actors is finished, Howard admits (despite shutting them out) that he had noticed the others’ troubles all along. He gives a speech acknowledging Claire’s sacrifice, Simon’s illness and Whit’s daughter, and is particularly verbal in this scene where he wasn’t before. This is supposed to show him getting better, but the film gives no indication, at least none that was particularly consequential, that Howard was improving mentally. Ergo, his eloquence is sudden, and it gives the impression that Howard has been like this the whole time, just hiding it under devastated affectations, and therefor ignoring his friends deliberately. It almost makes it look like he was using depression as an excuse. He has neglected these people, one of whom is dying, risked their livelihoods, cost them time, money and emotional stress, yet in this moment he becomes a different character, talking to these people like he’s wise and grateful. It’s a harrowing example of how bad writing can ruin the audience’s perception of a character.
The film’s other characters – Whit, Claire, Simon, Amy, Raffi and Brigitte – are next on the list. The film would have us believe the plan to have Love, Time and Death show up in front of Howard is all a conflicted act of friendship. But how its set up and where it ultimately goes begs differently.
They admit they haven’t thought this through. They have no idea if this is going to help Howard confront his issues. They’re trying to get Howard to recover from depression the same way they entertain an old woman’s dementia; it’s completely backwards. They say the scheme with the three actors is about “underlining that fact [that Howard is not in a good mental state] so that other people can see it too”, but when this is originally pitched to the three actors there’s no mention of any documentation or doctoring thereof.
And yes, that’s their plan: film Howard talking to the actors and then have the actors digitally removed to make it look like Howard is hallucinating. At first you’d think this massive stunt would be to bring Howard back, as Claire says, when in reality it’s about fabricating a reason for the company to question the competency of an already dysfunctional man.
Also, Whit just happens to be in contact with someone who can digitally edit people out of a video, without use of green screens or anything, confidentially, no questions asked, in a matter of days (at most) without any kind of distortion that would give away the illusion. That’s a huge stretch.
Whit, Claire and Simon are each paired with one of the three actors to prepare them for their roles and discuss the progress of their encounters with Howard. The three of them each have a subplot that is reflected in the role of the actor they are paired with: Whit wants to win back the love of his daughter, Claire is running out of time to start a family, and Simon is coming to terms with dying. That’s quite poetic and all, but it turns out the three actors have far more influence in improving the lives of Howard’s friends than of Howard himself. Howard is the protagonist. He is the one who needs to learn a lesson so he will go on to improve the lives of his friends.
The actors’ motivations are less than admirable. They decide to manipulate someone they’ve never met, at the behest of people they don’t know, for the promise that their play will get funded, but not before haggling for price. Raffi does it just for the money. Brigitte makes the excuse that they’ll be partaking in some kind of therapy for Howard, though it’s heavily implied through her character that she’s just doing it for the sake of her own ego. Amy, being the “loving” one, is against doing it, yet she does it anyway.
Another thing is they’re doing this despite being completely unqualified for it. None of them have expertise in medical psychology. None of them have an understanding in human emotion, despite their function as actors being to impel human emotion! Brigitte, as Death, comes close when she tries to “clear things up” between her and Howard. It’s the only time one of these characters isn’t lecturing him.
Amy, on the other hand, despite demonstrating that she can rephrase Whit’s words in more effective ways, goes in unprepared as Love and repeats Whit’s lines almost word for word. Amy, within the first wave of visitations from the ‘spirits’, is the first one that Howard walks out on in a rejecting way. This is meant to symbolise that Howard rejects love more than he does death or time, but the way the scene plays out, it feels less like he’s rejecting love because he’s stubborn and broken and more like he’s walking out because Amy’s performance was unconvincing.
In a later scene, Amy, as Love, lists off the various forms love can take: “I can be happy. I can be unexpected and unpredictable and sexy and warm and mysterious…and home.” Saying this to Howard directly is too on-the-nose. Amy is barely any of the things she mentioned, in or out of her persona. She’s supposedly sensitive to Howard’s needs and reluctant to go along with the plan, even refusing at one point, which she’s completely justified in doing, yet she keeps coming back despite having no reason to continue in this charade.
As I’ve mentioned, the personas of Love, Time and Death don’t help Howard. Brigitte and Amy wax philosophical about the uncertainty of what comes after death and love being the reason, while Raffi repeats himself about time being a gift. But none of them, not one, ever says or does anything to help bring Howard back from his misery, because it’s all a ploy by Howard’s so-called friends to exploit it.
On top of this reprehensible scheme, its inadequate players and their flatulent monologues, the film goes even further with how incompetently it handles its tone and plot.
Death is the first personified abstraction to confront Howard, and almost immediately the tone shifts from a heavy drama to that of a goofy comedy. And in the next scene, right after Simon pats Brigitte on the back for her performance, the film switches gears and we get a woman at a grief counseling session giving an anecdote about her little boy going to Heaven. I’m surprised I didn’t get whiplash from that U-turn.
For our next sin in tone we bring in Madeleine, a grief counselor at the support group that Howard starts attending after his first encounter with Brigitte/Death. When Howard returns again to the support group after it’s finished, he asks, “What’d I miss?” and Madeleine shrugs and replies, “People crying ‘cause their kids died.” And Howard chuckles.
That is not funny. The 1-on-1 dialogue between Howard and Madeleine is already stilted and unnatural, especially in a preachy moment where she tells an anecdote about “collateral beauty”, as if we needed the title to be explored in the film itself, or as if anyone with a shred of tact or experience would come up to a grieving mother and use made-up terms like that. But the idea that someone would make light of the grief of others, laughing at their expense, when that someone knows full well the pain they’re going through, especially when they’re responsible for helping these people cope, is thoroughly despicable!
We’re supposed to hate Howard’s landlord for making use of the food Claire buys and Howard lets go to waste, but I’m pretty sure the filmmakers framed him like this just to make the other characters look good by comparison.
After this there is a decent moment where Howard takes Madeleine to his office at night to tell her about his suspected hallucinations and he describes a time when he tried to bargain his life for that of his daughter. It shows that, even though he has been resistant to the confrontations, he is starting to open up. If the film had continued with Howard’s progression through the visitations, this might have been a good turning point in the story. But because it immediately follows the two making jokes at the expense of bereaved and depressed parents, I’m still mad at these characters. And because the scheme goes ahead to manipulate and expose Howard rather than help him face his issues, the merit of the scene is void.
And the big twist at the end is that Brigitte, Amy and Raffi – appearing to Howard one more time before disappearing – were indeed the supernatural personifications of Death, Love and Time. What. A. Load. Apparently, these three entities “connect every single human being on Earth”, are ever-present and “abundant”, yet with their ageless wisdom and experience, Eros, Chronos and Thanatos decide to pretend to be actors so that someone else can introduce them to their target and then portray themselves while giving him a bunch of philosophical and poetic yarns. Here’s an idea they could have gone with from the beginning: contact Howard directly and talk to him like he’s an emotional human being!
And the cherry on top of all of this is that none of this was necessary, not Whit’s plan or the divine intervention. Howard spends his work hours playing with dominos. He’s not doing any work or maintaining relationships with other companies, so his company is failing. Someone will have noticed. Someone will have reported it. Later on in the film Howard gets a business letter warning him “the board could call [his] competency into question.” Anyone can see this man is a detriment to the company. The board would have looked at his history, decided that he wasn’t well enough to work and hired someone as a replacement or a substitute. This whole plot was pointless!
I realise now how nearly everything I said in the concluding paragraph of the Collateral Beauty review was wrong. I was so sucked in by the experience that, as an audience member, I let myself be manipulated to like bad characters and a broken plot, and as a critic I didn’t think about what I was meant to critique. It seems confused about what it wants to do and how it should do it. The plot to use actors to personify the three abstractions might have been clever if their interactions with Howard were meant to help him come to terms with his grief. Howard doesn’t learn anything from these characters like Ebenezer Scrooge does from the ghosts in A Christmas Carol; at the end of every interaction he rejects them. The scenes that this movie is based around, Howard meeting the ‘spirits’, are underwritten, yet bloated at the same same, and derail from what should be the point. It is possible that the subject matter was too heavy for this particular concept. It is also possible that the creative team had no idea how to handle the themes of depression and mental illness, which is already reason enough not to tackle them before writing such odious things as deceiving a depressed man and mocking the bereaved. The characters range from morally bankrupt to complicit to downright insulting, yet the audience is expected to like them. Collateral Beauty is pompous, needless and mean spirited dressed in star power, pretty colours and music – the most superficial film I have ever seen.
In conclusion…
I would hope this Top 10 list shows I have learned from my mistakes, not only regarding how I view other films but also hopefully in gaining an understanding of film, filmmaking and the film industry. I will be sure to be more vigilant in the future. By looking back at one's work and the work of others, we can figure out what worked, what didn’t, how it could have worked, and how we can improve our work in the future. In the end, that is what criticism is for.
