Touching, well-made and thoughtful.

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 1998)

The essential and unnerving lesson in Meet Joe Black is the inevitability of death. From nearly the first scene we are made aware that Anthony Hopkins' Bill Parrish will die. When the Reaper, in the form of, yes, Brad Pitt, comes on the scene, we are told again and again. Throughout the movie there is the thought, hey, this is a movie, he won't die. But he does. That's not a spoiler. It's a part of life, and the life cycle, that this movie treats with great respect and consideration. In short, this film is about the persona of Death, who comes to earth on a "holiday" with the intention of learning about the modern world and the people who inhabit it. He chooses for his guide, Bill Parrish, a whole-souled, worldly media magnate with two loving daughters. Marcia Gay Harden's character apparently plans parties for a living. Susan, played by Claire Forlani, is a doctor. Now, if you have to go, you could have worse escorts than Brad Pitt. He's amazing. We all think he's cute, when he's not doing weird things to his hair, but in parts of this film, the strange innocence of a character who does not really know the world, combined with that face, is almost too much. Despite the fact that death brings thoughts of hideous decay and putrefaction, in this film, death wears a face from heaven. It softens the blow for Bill Parrish and beyond that, it brings some kind of quality of luminescence to a movie that could be so shadowed. Inevitably, there is a love story and this one effectively convinces us that it is one of those timeless true loves. In part, it can't be anything else - Death probably doesn't have flings. Forlani, the girl, is wonderfully fragile and human, and more importantly she has a wonderful truthfulness about her. She's not just an actress acting, but a real person in the midst of experiences that are almost incomprehensible. The film has the some of that icky Hollywood quality where every scene, every room, every restaurant are perfect, shiny and bright, slaved over by some set designer. This world of the incredibly rich that grates a bit. The final scenes are set at a party that is unfortunately reminiscent of the party scenes in the recent Harrison Ford Sabrina. It's a world of fantasy that doesn't play in real life. When it's blown up one hundred times on screen it's far too much to take. And it is the last scenes, the last five minutes of the film, that are Meet Joe Black's only failing. One senses the influence of test audiences and focus groups. Sometimes people don't know what's good for them. In this case, what's supposed to be a kind of happy ending compromises the integrity of the rest of the film. The attempt at feel-good is not at all comforting and it demeans the love between the entity, the man perhaps, that is Death and his girl, a lovely lady doctor from New York.