Meet Joe Black

From Life to Death and Vice Versa.

Meet Joe Black is my first watch of the year and what a way to get started!

I definitely expected a more predictable romantic trope from a Hollywood picture. There were some thematic references to classic romance, but it was much more ambitious in the questions it asked. Even more so in the answers it did and didn’t give.

Martin Brest took a very unique philosophical route with this film and I think it was a risky but captivating choice.

The movie explores the life of a dying man, Bill Parish, who gets the chance to extend his life for a short while. The catch is that he must show death personified, how to live a human life.

Yes, it sounds outlandish and really was outlandish, but Brad Pitt’s character is death, who feeling lonely in his occupation of taking human life, seeks to gain a glimpse of what it means to be alive.

The challenge of this film was convincing the audience that this very normal looking man, was actually inhabited by a metaphysical entity, completely unfamiliar with the defining qualities of humanity.

To this end, it was a great success. Prior to showing up in the flesh as Brad, death whispered to Bill Parish daily, maniacally taunting him as his life slowly faded in sickness. It seemed an accurate representation of what the voice of death would be like. Unforgiving and torturous.

When he entered the picture as a grown man, Brad’s acting spectacularly conveyed the naivety and curiosity of a child. It really did seem as though he was spending his first day on earth. From his irrational obsession with peanut butter to his comical lack of social cues, it was hard to watch Joe Black (the fake pseudonym of death) learn to be human.

I think the great fallacy of this movie was in the risk it took of personifying something as intangible as death. Death isn’t interactive, it doesn’t bargain with us or tell us when our time has come. It simply arrives announced and leaves no reason to cushion loss.

In making death a man, Martin Brest made it seem as though death can be reasoned with. In showing him fall in love with Susan, he suggests that death has the capacity to love. In the ways that Joe grew to defend Bill, he implied that death could be a friend. And while this fantasy was interesting to entertain for a couple of hours, I never truly fell for it because death is inherently the opposite of everything Joe Black was.

Death does not have the ability to experience emotion, desire or intimacy. Death can’t be human, despite the best efforts of this film to convince that it could be. It was really an impossible hypothetical because for death to be death, it can only be death. Exacting and inanimate.

The greatest tragedy of this film however, is not its impossibility, but rather Brad Pitt speaking patois. He really tried, but the caucasian roots were clearly at odds with the island language.

All the same, I think this film was worth the watch. I may not agree with its implications, but the experimental plot was fun to follow. In the end, I actually think it tells much more about the story of life. Given the brief time that Joe and Bill had to live, the urgency they carried revealed that life is as precious as it is, only because it must come to an end.

If you’ve watched this movie, please let me know what your thoughts were!