Mirror and Razor

Rating: 9/10 (21 January 2013)

"Meet Joe Black" is very much like many of my favorite books. I can read them often and they lose no flavor; in fact, their characters and the stories woven about them seep deeper and deeper into my own life to the extent that fiction and non-fiction intermingle.
Anthony Hopkins, one of my favorite actors, again becomes the character, Magnate Bill Parrish. Hopkins again makes it seem as if every word emanating from his lips is newly-minted as if the struggles he is undergoing well up out of threat, terror, and Ozymandias-like success.
Claire Forlani truly seems to be the real daughter of this business titan; I believe it is her most convincing role to date.
Despite the fact that much of the movie's plot takes place in the rarefied atmosphere of the biggest business on the planet, in pressurized board rooms where the fate of lives and corporations are decided like a knife fight in an alley, I continue to find more and more to relate to in this movie over the years.
Thomas Newman's intriguing, ethereal musical motifs are like shadows of the characters and their tentative actions in a movie about people who illustrate, in a fresh manner, the clichÃ© that money does not necessarily buy happiness; in fact, opulence makes life trickier.
This is especially a movie about fathers and daughters, about two very different kinds of beings who ingratiate themselves into the good graces of a father, with mixed results, because, ultimately, this movie is about various kinds of love and various kinds of life lessons.
Brad Pitt demonstrates that his earlier work in "Interview with a Vampire" was no fluke; Pitt earns my respect in a dual role, alternating from sympathetic and lovable to the obverse and then back again.
I think that "Meet Joe Black" is a film that acts as a mirror for my own life, forcing me to do quite a bit of personal self-reflection. The film also behaves very much like a razor: the dialog is sharp, cutting, peeling away layers of every character as powerful emotions buffet their lives, paring away all sorts of fronts, romantic, mercenary and societal.
Like some novels that I regard as old friends, stories I can savor and truly delve deeper into as I read them every year, I am a different person each time I watch "Meet Joe Black." The dialog, plot and all other elements never deviate, but I change as life buffets me, paring away my many fronts as I grow, learn and take risks.
This is an entertaining movie, but it is a very pensive film. The humor is very lightly ironical, but quite cerebral in the sense of discovering anew just what each of us truly wants in our lives, in our relationships, in our business deals and careers. The movie strongly investigates personal and professional legacies, ethics and morality.
Despite the high society backdrop, I found the story very much down-to-earth. The Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Heavenly Virtues do not budge simply because the personages who grapple with and adopt these values are rich, spoiled, guileless, unaffected, or effete. This is a good people movie, especially in terms of very deep questions such as "Who am I?" "Who do I truly wish to be?" "What do I really want from love and life?" "Meet Joe Black" is a movie that touched me at first viewing; and each time I watch it, it gets to me, down deep.
Each of us has his or her own definition of entertainment. This will not be everyone's cup of tea. Hopkins, Pitt and Forlani fans may enjoy the manner in which the script opens each actor. I can imagine each of them reading the script for the first time. I can imagine Hopkins reading it and deciding that the script would provoke from him a different set of subtle emotions, gestures and interactions in a different set of unique relationships.
Like a razor, the movie shaves life very close. Tomorrow and next year, I will need another shave, but the feel of the blade strikes me as quite different at 67 than it did 15 years ago when the movie came out. The film is also like a mirror, in that I find much in my own existence to think about and weigh in terms of happiness, success, expedience versus making truly authentic choices in life.