Monday - August 24, 2020 - Movie reviews for films that first screened a minute ago: Meet Joe Black (1998).

It’s been a minute, but I first watched Meet Joe Black (1998) twenty-two years after its release, on an early July evening. I started the film at midnight. My thought process must have been this: if it holds up, I'll stay awake. If it doesn't hold up, I might finish it in the morning. Looking back, I know this much: although I did stay awake, I'm not sure that the film holds up.

I can grasp the film’s how, but I do not understand its why. I get that Brad Pitt plays death, who is visiting William Parrish (Anthony Hopkins), and is helping him see and enjoy the value of his life before he passes on to the other side. I grasp that Parrish, when pressed by family to introduce his friend, death, gives death a name, Joe, which prompts: "Joe who? Does he have a last name?" Parrish's son-in-law asks, "Joe Black," Parrish responds.

By a film holding up, I mean a film that honors its end of the bargain. If you're going to ask people to watch a three-hour film, you not only have to keep them tuning in, empathizing with the characters and enjoying their performances, but you also have to bring it all home in the end –––– and even if not in a big way, then at least, in a satisfying and worthwhile manner. Meet Joe Black misses on this point, yet the irony is this: the film literally ends with fireworks.

Yet, even setting the fireworks aside, this is where Meet Joe Black misses the mark the most: it's a three-hour film about death, which kills off its best character within the first thirty minutes, just because. What's worse, we don't even get to spend long enough of a time with the character to learn his name: we just know that he's played by Brad Pitt, and that he meets Parrish's daughter, Susan (Claire Forlani) in a diner in Manhattan on one shimmering sunny morning. We know that he buys Susan a cup of coffee and finds a way to charm her so much so that even talk of marriage and spending the rest of their lives together becomes fair game. 

This is one of the best scenes I've ever watched. Not because of what "coffee shop guy" and Susan say to each other, but more so the way that they're both incredibly careful and calculating, yet even despite their caution, over just one coffee, they create something genuine and deep and meaningful between them.

This is not easy to do, in life, and it's definitely not easy to create and capture in film. So when it happens, when the awe of the spark of love-at-first-sight descends down from the heavens, it must be honored, cherished, and treated with reverence and deep respect. Which means you can't go killing off the guy in a car accident three minutes later!

What kept me hooked within Meet Joe Black was the possibility that "coffee shop guy" might come back from the dead. What prevents me from sitting through Meet Joe Black again is knowing that he does, indeed, come back, but only sort of, and for a while, i.e., a few hours. But sort of is only enough to keep you hanging on once, which I did.

Meet Joe Black wants to please. It wants to delight. It wants to be liked. And in one regard, its desire to be accepted can be met: visually, it is a beautiful film.

Bill Parrish owns a media company and lives in a mansion in Providence, Rhode Island. He's turning sixty-five and his other daughter, Allison (Marcia Gay Harden), is in the midst of planning an extravagant birthday party for him. The mansion, together with the force of Anthony Hopkins’ character adds a decadence and grace to the film,  which does inspire.

In fact, to the film's credit, Joe Black says this better, after Parrish tells him, "I still don't understand. Why'd you pick me," Black responds, "I chose you for your verve, your excellence and your ability to instruct. You've lived a first-rate life, and I find it eminently usable."

Yet, as the viewer, who had immersed himself in a three-hour journey, I did not just want to find the characters within Meet Joe Black eminently usable. Or at least, that's not all that I wanted; I also wanted to enjoy them. Use only gets you so far. And although Meet Joe Black is an ambitious and yearning work of art, which deserves praise and honor for its effort, after taking this three-hour journey once, I neither feel nor see the point in traversing its belabored and prolonged expanse again.