Sometimes if you approach something with little to no expectations - good or bad - you open yourself up to be surprised by new thoughts, new feelings, that you may not have noticed if you were too focused on what you wanted to see.
Tonight I spontaneously went to see the new movie, "Collateral Beauty," with a friend. While I had seen the trailer and hoped to see the movie, I was not sure what to expect. I had heard the movie received harsh reviews, but let's be honest - many of my favorite movies would not be considered worth seeing by many of the popular rating systems, so I like to assess things for myself.
I mean, let's be honest here: "It's A Wonderful Life" initially flopped, but now is considered a classic - one my family watches every Christmas.
No, I'm not saying that "Collateral Beauty" will necessarily become a classic, and maybe there are technical flaws in the acting, the story arc, the dialogue, or whatever it is that critics feel they must pick apart. But if you simply take the negative things people have to say and never look at the positives, you are missing out on something truly beautiful! (And not just because beauty is in the title.)
This post is not going to be a movie review - not really. I'm not going to give away the story or dig into details of why I loved it. What I am trying to say is that it gave me hope. In a world where we often feel like there is little goodness, where ugliness is glorified and shame exulted, here was a film that tried to explore how we can look past that and rise above it all. No, the grief and pain never go away, but it should never cause you to stop living your life. There is beauty that can come from the wreckage threatening to overpower our senses.
If you are hoping for a movie where in the end either the world burns or everyone is happy, this isn't going to satisfy your cravings. But to me, that's part of why this movie was actually effective. There was an element to it that stayed realistic - people don't heal to the point of being like they were before, they heal into something that is scarred, that has endured, that can continue on. People don't have to succumb to the miserableness of pain and anger and fear; they can confront those things and come out victorious for having engaged in the battle.
This is a song I've been hearing on the radio a lot lately, and I drove home with the lyrics stuck in my head. Even though the message of this song is focused on a different type of pain, I felt like it applied and wanted to share:
"Scars To Your Beautiful" by Alessia Cara
And of course I had to finish up with the credit song from "Collateral Beauty:"
"You've been given a gift, this profound connection to everything. Just look for it, and I promise it's there, the collateral beauty." ~Madeleine, "Collateral Beauty"
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