Collateral Beauty - Renegade Cut

you will not believe the plot of collateral Beauty powered an executive loses his daughter to cancer following this he becomes distant at work his co-workers wit Claire and Simon love Howard but need to cut him out of the equation in order to sell the company they learned that Howard has been writing letters to the concepts of love time and death to vent his frustrations with life so they hire three actors to play the spirits of those abstract concepts Gaslight Howard record him looking like a crazy person and prove that he is mentally unfit to be part of the deal so it can go through wit Claire and Simon are not portrayed as monsters though the movie finds this whimsical and heartwarming the three actors also end up trying to help with three co-workers with their problems which daughter resents him following a messy divorce Claire once a baby and Simon is dying and has not told anyone Howard goes to group therapy and forms a friendship with his therapist but the plot twists during the last few minutes of the film is that she's actually his ex-wife and mother of their deceased child they were just pretending to not know each other over the course of the film because reasons it is explained but the explanation is terrible wit Claire and Simon digitally removed the actors from the recordings but second plot twists the three actors really are the magical embodiment of love time and death even though for reasons I will explain that does not make a whole lot of sense there are zero consequences to the actions of the three co-workers and Howard is magically cured of depression by crying I actually don't have a problem with the premise a man suffering from grief is visited by the manifestations of love time and death abstract concepts are portrayed as beings as gods throughout mythology and folklore that aspect of the premise of collateral beauty is not very strange its classical in fact the problem is how everything is structured and the artificiality of how the plot unspools mental illness is rarely portrayed well in film leading to a lot of misinformation and stigmatization of everything from bipolar disorder to depression Howard does not have depression in the general sense he has magical movie depression he sits alone in a dark room never speaking never eating he goes to work every day but somehow never speaks to anyone including his best friend what is he even doing there he rises bicycle and cries at night he is the saddest bicyclist he sets up dominoes and then much like the action hero who turns away from the explosion he refuses to watch them fall he writes letters to abstract concepts in miserable poetry everyone grieves differently and that's understandable but Howard is not grieving he is being afflicted by movie magic he is a caricature of depression and it is embarrassing to watch characters spelled inane platitudes that would be humiliating on a Hallmark card or fortune cookie let alone a Hollywood film dying everyone's funny I realized that I wasn't feeling well I had become loved you never know nothing's ever really dead if you look at it right just be sure to notice the collateral Beauty Wow deep it's very twee and sugary in a way that is inauthentic rather than sweet disingenuous rather than sincere the drama of a broken man and his broken friends fits together so neatly that it feels more suspicious than the intent of being heartwarming even the title which is dropped several times in the film really hits the e wrong the three abstractions are actually introduced by Howard himself in the one scene before his daughter dies he says that everything in life can be narrowed down to three things love time and death first of all no that is very nearly the dangerously simplified world view of the pedophile antagonist from Donnie Darko but coming out of the mouths of Will Smith second how convenient how it is somehow correct within the universe of this film there really are three abstractions everything in life is boiled down to these three figures who will magically intervene with his life soon the schemers the trio of wit Claire and Simon are morally irredeemable but the film portrays them more as concerned and Howard explicitly tells them that they are right absolving them of any wrongdoing and hand-waving away this disgusting act so that the audience does not question too much about the film I prefer to keep renegade cut as a webseries that is almost entirely devoted to philosophies and politics espoused by film as well as thematic elements but this is a good opportunity to discuss misconceptions about plot holes plot contrivance --is and criticism of movie plots collateral beauties - twists and indeed the main thread of a narrative of is burdened by the most glaring obvious and embarrassing plot contrivance 'as seen in recent films there is a difference between the criticism of a plot hole and the criticism of a plot contrivance not to mention criticism of minor details or nitpicking I feel like these distinctions have become lost in a sea of lists articles and ignorant conflation of inconsequential details and true plot holes so let's hammer down some hard definitions for the sake of comparison a plot hole is an error or gap in the narrative that violates the internal logic of the film makes the events impossible and a story untenable these are actually more rare than one might think it's just that people keep claiming any minor issue counts as a plot hole a plot contrivance which is a lesser problem than a true hole is a weak artificial point in the narrative that is created to serve the larger plot or make an improbable twist happen criticism of plot holes and contrivances is markedly different from nitpicking details that do not change the flow of the story in collateral Beauty the twist is that the three actors are actually magical creates problems in the plot because the narrative around the twist actually makes more sense if the actors are in fact just actors in other words if the twist did not exist the film would make more sense that is the opposite of how this should work the twist changes everything about the narrative and actively works against the logic of the film why do love time and death require the assistance of wit Claire and Simon in order to help Howard don't they already know they are needed aren't they the magical abstractions already aware of this one could argue that they are not only needed to help Howard but also wit Claire and Simon themselves they have their own problems but the issue with that line of thinking is that the abstractions are not needed at all to resolve their issues wit reconnects with his daughter due to something Howard tells him Simon is convinced to tell his wife about his illness but the conclusion is that she already knew Claire does not have a baby by the end of the film now you could say that this is all part of some elaborate plan my love time and death fitting everything neatly together and tying it up in a bow but that alone is too easy too contrived there's that word again and it also relies on wit following love to a theater where he meets the three actors the idea that love just knew wit would do that is a plot contrivance an artificial weak part of the narrative we have to mentally jump through a lot of Hoops to come to the conclusion that love time and death simply knew that wit Claire and Simon would react a certain way if love time and death wanted to intercede in the lives of these people they could just do that instead of wrapping themselves up in this improbable tapestry of Lies that could very easily unravel there is more though death tries to convince Simon that she should play all three parts in one scene something an actor might say but not death Simon Says no because the plot needs him to say no but what if he said yes he doesn't because the movie needs him to say no but that's not the point the point is that if she were a human actor this might make sense but since she is death she is actively endangering her own plan why would she do that and risk him saying yes next love drops out of the project and forces Witte to convince her to come back if she were an actor this might make sense but she is a magical abstraction of love and actually wants to do this so it does not how could she be so certain that wit would come after her these things do work out because the plot needs them to but it stretches the limits of our suspension of disbelief the actors demand $20,000 for their services and the payments go through and if there were actors this would make sense but because they are magical beings that do not require such things it does not they basically robbed them of thousands of dollars money they may need even if the sale goes through why do time and death require cash again this only makes sense without the twist that they are magic and not actors the twist actively works against the narrative even in a fantasy movie internal logic must make sense the internal logic of the film is that the abstract concepts of love time and death exist as living manifestations that is the premise of the film that alone is not the problem the problem is that the movie constantly violates its own internal logic a goofy premise is not the issue Howard and his ex-wife pretending they don't know each other for the benefit of exposition to the audience is perhaps the most contrived plot point some viewers have posited that maybe Howard has amnesia instead but even under that assumption it is worse and more ridiculous accepting that in the world of collateral beauty abstractions exists is not the same as accepting that in the world of collateral Beauty divorced couples behave prosperously around one another in a fashion to facilitate obscuring the plot from the audience it is the most unnatural twist seen in a major Hollywood picture in a long time again there is a difference between a plot hole and applaude contrivance and they are often mixed up so I want to be clear a plot hole cannot be reconciled I'll be charitable and say that collateral beauty is more the stuff of plot contrivance --is rather than outright holes but there are so many of them we may be able to find some way to explain them away but these contrivances are so baffling that they require a significant amount of mental gymnastics to have them make sense let me make something perfectly clear there is a difference between noticing completely baffling plot elements and the time-honored Internet tradition of nitpicking I don't want to nitpick see nitpicks are inconsequential minor details that are barely part of the narrative is at all maybe we should not care that we learn how the private investigator or the three co-workers have access to high-end digital special-effects technology it's definitely silly but it's also a nitpick about something that does not need to be explained for the plot to progress the plot contrivance is however are related to the two major twists and the main threat of the film not small details and minutiae the main thread distinctions between plot holes and plot contrivance --is as well as a distinction between what I just said and nitpicking are necessary to properly examine film miner continuity errors between one scene and another are not plot holes or even plot contrivance Asst they're just movie goof-ups plot contrivance --iz need to be seen as what they are so that we can recognize them and recognize good filmmaking from bad it's really unfortunate that nitpicking has become confused with actual film criticism and that actual film criticism has been dismissed as nitpicking it creates a problem because when someone brings up a legitimate irreconcilable problem with a film if people think nitpicking and actual criticism are the same then someone will call that legitimate problem nitpicking and dismiss it they are noticeably different and I hope I have shown that thanks for listening hi everyone if you 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Channel: Renegade Cut

Views: 40,696

Rating: 4.9417219 out of 5

Keywords: collateral beauty, will smith, edward norton, kate winslet, helen mirren, jacob latimore, naoime harris, michael pena, keira knightley, plot hole, plot contrivance, movies, film, film analysis, collateral beauty: review, collatereal beauty: movie review, leon thomas, renegade cut, mental illness, depression

Id: 2Fc0T8_5bAo

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2017