Col­lat­er­al Beauty

Pre-release trail­ers for David Frankel’s Col­lat­er­al Beau­ty posi­tioned the film as yet anoth­er con­tem­po­rary update of Charles Dick­ens’ ​‘A Christ­mas Car­ol’ with a Scrooge arche­type vis­it­ed by angels who are tasked with mak­ing him realise the error of his ways.

Griev­ing father Howard (Will Smith) is called on by the phys­i­cal embod­i­ments of Death, Love and Time hav­ing penned angry let­ters to them fol­low­ing the death of his young daugh­ter. These man­i­fes­ta­tions (played by Helen Mir­ren, Keira Knight­ley and Jacob Lati­more) try to rea­son him into see­ing beau­ty in the world again.

But what the trail­er doesn’t tell you – and this isn’t a spoil­er but rather the mad premise of this film – is that the recip­i­ents of said let­ters are in fact not angels but actors hired by Howard’s col­leagues. In order to regain con­trol of his adver­tis­ing com­pa­ny, three ter­ri­ble friends plan to film him talk­ing to the fake angels then edit them out of the footage as proof he is no longer fit to be their boss.

Mis­lead­ing mar­ket­ing wil­ful­ly obscur­ing the prof­it-dri­ven gaslight­ing that forms the basic plot is just one clunky attempt by Col­lat­er­al Beau­ty to pass itself off as a heart­warm­ing Christ­mas tale. The char­ac­ters spend much of the film’s run­time try­ing to con­vince the audi­ence – and them­selves – that the depress­ing and insane­ly insen­si­tive plan they have con­coct­ed is some­how just as ben­e­fi­cial to the com­pa­ny as it is to their griev­ing pal.

Beyond the psy­chot­ic awful­ness of the sce­nario, there is some­thing inher­ent­ly off about the film’s attempt to rec­on­cile the exis­ten­tial top­ic of grief with the more mate­ri­al­is­tic world of busi­ness affairs. We are told that for the past two years Howard has been going to the office every day but neglect­ing his work, instead spend­ing all his time in a room entire­ly ded­i­cat­ed to sym­bol­ic domi­no-based activ­i­ties. In what world would the total absence of a boss take two years to impact on a company’s busi­ness? What sort of com­pa­ny can afford to have an entire room ded­i­cat­ed to domi­nos? Did any­one sug­gest counselling?

Such mad non­sense is more dis­heart­en­ing than it is fun­ny, for it forms a painful reminder that accord­ing to Hol­ly­wood, busi­ness and prof­it now rule the world; its sur­vival­ist prin­ci­ples absorbed into even the most escapist of mate­r­i­al. Just like the recent Office Christ­mas Par­ty, this bru­tal sub­text taints every attempt at forg­ing true emo­tion, every moment of gen­uine fun.

Only Helen Mir­ren shines, play­ing a cool the­atre actor sport­ing a Grate­ful Dead t‑shirt on her down­time, yet able to trans­form her­self into an ele­gant lady when imper­son­at­ing Death. This play-act­ing-with­in-the-film is exact­ly the kind of device that should cre­ate dozens of oppor­tu­ni­ties for amus­ing dou­ble enten­dres and riffs on real­i­ty, truth and fan­ta­sy. Yet here it feels as though the awk­ward­ness of the script hin­ders such cre­ative leaps. Mir­ren is cursed instead with a lead­en sub­plot about a char­ac­ter revealed to be ter­mi­nal­ly ill.

Oth­ers do not emerge so well from the wreck­age. Accord­ing to the film’s sac­cha­rine log­ic, Keira Knightley’s Amy gives a ter­ri­ble teary per­for­mance in the role of Love, while an uncon­vinc­ing romance with Edward Norton’s Whit doesn’t help. Smith is at his grum­bling worst in yet anoth­er ​‘seri­ous’ role, and Kate Winslet is just about present. But Michael Peña is per­haps the most trou­bling per­former, choos­ing, for obscure rea­sons, to call back to his char­ac­ter in Paul Hag­gis’ odd­ly sim­i­lar tale of urban inter­con­nect­ed­ness, Crash, in a role that prompts the same kind of mar­tyr­dom and pat philosophising.

The film’s anx­i­ety is paired with an intense self-aware­ness which makes for a few suc­cess­ful and refresh­ing moments. A scene where an angry Howard lists all of the usu­al ways peo­ple try to ratio­nalise the death of a loved one is almost mov­ing in its per­cep­tive­ness. But such instances are few and far between, and they nev­er make up for the gen­er­al unpleas­ant­ness of the experience.

Shot in a flat, TV-style and scored to with­in an inch of its life, the film ends with no less than two twists, the last one prov­ing to be an ulti­mate, des­per­ate attempt to roman­ti­cise the sto­ry, but which only winds up jeop­ar­dis­ing the nar­ra­tive ​“log­ic” of every­thing that has come before. The wis­dom bomb we are left with is: at Christ­mas, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that even though your friends might some­times try to con­vince you you’re insane, We Are All Connected.