A better movie than I originally thought...

Rating: 9/10 (19 June 2005)

I didn't particularly care for this movie when I first watched it, but on viewing it a second time I had a different judgment. This is a movie that has its own pace, a little slow at times, and the viewer must adjust to it. Once you're attuned to it, the movie has a charm and a poignancy that makes it possible then to see that it's about the transcendency of love over death. When "Death" comes to earth in the form of Joe Black to find out what it's like to be mortal, he learns that love trumps "Death," though not in quite the way one would expect. It's a fantasy based loosely on "Death Takes a Holiday," a 1934 film directed by Mitchell Leisen. The luminous presence of Claire Forlani as Susan lends beauty and a moving piquancy to the scenes between her and Brad Pitt as Joe Black. When one sees Susan and Joe Black together, one wants the scene to last "forever." Anthony Hopkins is as usual excellent, though it seems by now that he could almost, to use a cliché, phone in his performance. Brad Pitt is studiedly thoughtful, and one can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he portrays Joe Black.
It's a long film that could have been a little shorter without sacrificing the mood or the plot. The music, by Thomas Newman, is a perfect complement to the movie, though once or twice I thought it a little loud and thus intrusive.
Forget what the professional critics have said. See this movie, but be prepared to let it sink in.