Summary
Howard Inlet’s successful life as an executive is rocked when the death of his daughter sends him spiralling in despair and erratic behavior. His friends and business partners, motivations mixed between helping their friend and securing their business, employ three actors to challenge and hopefully heal Howard.
Review
Why do I dislike this film so much? There are many reasons, running from nitpick to fundamental flaw, so I hope you understand that not every point I attempt to make is of equal weight in my mind.
My main issue with this film is its laziness. This laziness comes in many forms, the first of which is in its writing. I’m sure to many people the writing will seem smart and enjoyable for the way things seem to click together with mirror images finding each other and completing each other in a variety of scenes. This does not take great skill to do. It’s actually quite easy since you are in control of all the variables. What is difficult is creating dead ends, misdirects, character flaws, and personal failures that seem real, earned, and connect with the audience.
Another sign of laziness in the film are the metaphors employed. Don’t get me started on how lazy of a metaphor a domino is and it is used throughout the film. Used is a kind word, though. There are multiple scene that have dominos in them. They are never used to reveal anything, emphasize anything, or contribute to a single character’s journeys or growth. Why even have them in the film?
The reason everything clicks together nicely in this film is because it is simple and easily controlled. Most of the characters have a relationship with one person, Howard, and then one struggle in life in the form of another relationship or lack of one. As a result, their problems are easily fixed over the course of the film.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a simple plot, but only when its simplicity is used as a way of communicating inner complexity. This is a film that eschews complexity for the sake of simple answers and ephemeral easy feelings.
This is a film that wants us to look at the silver lining in every dark cloud but doesn’t ever let us get a real glimpse at the dark cloud. The answers it offers feel trite compared to real pain which most of us have endured. Showing us the story of this man’s life falling apart might have made it hard to keep certain twists (which are forecast a mile away) and it might have made the movement of Howard’s character more complicated but it would have felt a lot more true than never ever seeing the relationship he is missing or the circumstances of his pain and then having complete strangers speak to him about that pain in generalities.
This film fails hard because they want to show us how beautiful the world is despite the pain we see but never lets us see the pain. The tacit message is that the pain must be forgotten, avoided, and not entered into. What could be more unhelpful than that.
Heap on top of this the number of film school 101 hacky devices which get used in the film and you have a terrible movie that struggled to keep my interest in between rolls of my eyes. He writes letters to Death, Time, and Love? If I had a nickel for every story I’ve heard pitched where people represent concepts of emotions I’d have enough money to make a better film than this one.
This film attempts to wrestle with real tragedy and pain in people’s lives but, unfortunately, lacks the courage to look at those difficulties in an honest and meaningful way. It seems more interested in patting people on the back and saying, ‘see, it all works out and there is beauty out there,” than it is in giving audiences the experience of finding beauty in the midst of ugliness. That would take real skill in writing, acting, directing and might not make as much money. I know, all things that this film wasn’t willing to put in for the sake of its own silver lining. The film makers seem to have forgotten that silver linings need dark clouds in order to shine brightly and one without the other just isn’t as beautiful.
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