How to Cope With Grief : A Review of Collateral Beauty

So this movie just recently came out and I thought it might be good.  I admire movies that are less fluff and tackle deep life issues.  Collateral Beauty looked like it was just the ticket.  After it arrived, I sat down to view it and see if Will Smith came through again in a moving performance.  First of all,  I will say it is VERY well acted.  They have many big names working in this movie which means the quality of work is not to be questioned.
Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, and Will Smith to name a few (as mentioned earlier).

Basically the story is about Will Smith who plays a grieving dad who lost his 6 year old daughter.  He basically stops performing at his job and starts doing domino creations and then watches them all crumble.  This is one of those movies where pink slips are non-existent and jobs allow their employees and/or co-founders to do whatever they desire while they process their life changes.  Makes a great movie,  but I seriously question how realistic it is in the real world.  Anyway, Will's co-workers want him to process it and be productive so they hire a crew of 3 actors which are paid to portray the three themes of Will's life:  Time, Love, and Death.  These actors take on the challenge and try to work through the difficulties with Will Smith's character to the point of helping him grieve, as well as helping him to snap back into reality.   Here is what I liked about Collateral Beauty:

1. Great attempt at processing the grief of loss of a loved one.  I admire their desire to make this movie deeper than average, yet I still felt it left something to be desired.

2. Great acting and well-done writing for the script.  The cast for this movie was very well put together and it was executed well.  The writing went a level deeper than most movies, but didn't go as deep as possible.

3. Nice twists and turn to leave the ending well put together.   I don't want to give anything away but this movie offered twists and turns as it played out and wasn't just a standard movie with very predictable paths.  That definitely helped my overall rating.

Now that I have listed the positives, I will summarize what I didn't like about it:

Negative 1:  No mention of the afterlife.   The whole movie didn't even TOUCH the subject of whether there is life after death - even though the Bible clearly teaches that.   Eternity is a long time and all of us will have to answer to God and His Son Jesus for the way we used our life on Earth and how we chose to believe or doubt the claims of Christ.

Negative 2: Too short to be adequately invested in the main character - I like Will Smith and his acting, but at the end of the movie I didn't feel like I was emotionally invested in his character as much as I was in the movie 7 Pounds.   This could be because there was so much acting talent, it was hard to follow one character exclusively, or it could have been due to the writing.  I'm not sure.  I just know it was well done, but didn't quite rise to the level of 4 stars due to the number of stories, actors/actresses and the writing.

Negative 3: No mention of truth being an absolute or a Person.   Typical Hollywood.  They want you to feel good, but don't want to make anyone believe they need to make changes (unless it is to become more liberal in their thinking).  Truth is absolute.  Truth is a Person and His name is Jesus Christ (John 14:6).  Without believing this,  your life will just fall apart when you don't understand why things happened when they did.   Check out the Bible.  Truth can bring comfort  and God will never let you down.

So to summarize : I enjoyed watching this movie - but I thought it could be done better.  I would give it a solid 3.5 stars out of 5.

How to Cope As a Parent - Rudderless

Even though I picked that as a title - I wouldn't recommend this movie for learning that skill.  I just recently watched Rudderless which is the story of a dad who loses his son early on in college and pretty much throws a lot of his life away with how it affect him.  He drinks too much and starts living on a houseboat.  He starts playing songs his late son wrote and in the course of discovering who he is,  he befriends another young man (about his son's age) and even starts playing in a band. This movie does a great job about showing the various ways parents cope with losing a child at an early age. Although the son died when he was about 20 years old - it took a tremendous toll on the dad and his way of dealing with it wasn't always admirable.

Here is a quick summation of what I liked about Rudderless

1. Interesting story detailing the grief of parents and how different parents grieve in unique ways at the loss of a child.

The son's mom and dad grieved in very different ways in this movie.  The mother ended up having another child whereas the divorced father took to drinking and removing himself from his business society.  He started working as a painter instead of a successful salesman and unfortunately drank way more than he should have.

2. Really interesting twist as the story unfolds.

This movie presents an unexpected twist into the whole story about mid-way through.  It blew me away and made the whole movie take on a different perspective.  Movies that can do that with good writing earn my admiration.

3. Good song-writing throughout the movie.

I thought the songs in this movie were above average.  They were typical alternative emo style music and were performed well throughout the whole movie.  This gave the movie a good artistic feel and made you appreciate the effort they put into song choices & writing.


4. Decent ending although not completely satisfying but fairly realistic. 

This didn't have a sappy ending, yet it didn't leave you feeling like it didn't close the movie right. It was a fitting ending considering the journey it takes you on, and although kind of sad, it still left you feeling like it was a good movie to watch unfold.

Dealing with grief throughout parenthood is a challenge for anyone.  Hopefully through it all, parents look to their Savior to help them find comfort and healing.  This movie didn't show that very much, but it did show the healing power of music on a grief stricken soul.