Hidden Beauty: Facing the Loss of a Loved One
it is a 2016 American film directed by David Frankel that generated many expectations and featured a cast with names such as Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Will Smith and Keira Knightley; however, despite the expectations and acting quality of its actors, the reviews were generally negative.
- From a cinematic point of view.
- The film falls into melodrama.
- Simple lament and an overdose of dialogues and phrases that seek emotion but stay on the surface.
- Hidden Beauty brings us an interesting theme.
- But it falls into a very forced sentimentality that is not believable.
- Hollywood.
- The Christmas scene in New York doesn’t help much either.
- Making it a family-friendly night TV movie.
The proposal is seductive, clearly influenced by Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and leads us to a successful man who, after the tragic death of his 6-year-old daughter, is plunged into a deep depression. His peers and friends are trying to help him and hire three actors to appear in his life as manifestations of three abstract concepts: Love, Death, and Time. A representation of life, an exhibition of the main fears we face that brings us closer to a very common problem in society: depression.
Leaving aside the melancholy presented by the film, the predictable plot and the lack of obvious naturalness from the beginning, the truth is that Beleza Occulta transforms a tragic situation into a kind of fable or tale. In this article we will not focus on the topic. film aspect, but about the proposal itself, about the lessons we can learn from it and about its relationship to psychology.
The film begins with a motivating speech by Will Smith’s character Howard Inlet, a very successful advertising entrepreneur. In his speech, he says that there are three things that connect all human beings: love, time, and death: “We aspire to love, we want to have more time, and we fear death. “Moments later, we witnessed a very different gift, in which Howard lost his six-year-old daughter and, as a result, a love for his work, for his friends, and for living. Howard doesn’t talk anymore, he’s not interested in anything and he’s on the verge of tears at all times.
This death, in addition to plunged him into a depression that prevents him from living his life, led him to separate himself from his wife, as is the case in most marriages after the loss of a child. your child may be very diverse, but the truth is that it is very common for different types of conflicts to arise: that one of the couple’s members is dealing with?, that the other, who blames himself, that one of us cannot overcome?
The grieving process is a complicated and difficult step for everyone, especially if the duel is related to the death of a child, for some people this duel is resolved over time and naturally, going through several phases until the situation is accepted. ; however, for others, it can stagnate, a lack of progress, resulting in a kind of disorder. In Howard’s case, we see that he suffers from a deep depression linked to a state of denial that prevents him from talking about it and having sex with others.
Your friends and colleagues are worried about your emotional situation. It is not easy to accept that a person you love and who has always seen so full of life is sinking and cannot move on; However, they decide to help him, also motivated by the situation of the company that directly affects them, to do so they hire a detective who discovers that Howard writes letters for Love, Death and Time, by the concepts he spoke positively about. at the beginning of the film.
As a result, they decided to hire three actors to stand before him as the embodiment of these concepts, so it will be shown that their mental health is not adequate for the position and, in turn, will be able to achieve it. see the situation he’s involved in.
The Christmas context in which the film takes place is also important, as these are dates when emotions are at the forefront, dates of reflection, ghosts of the past as in Dickens’s work, and memories of those who are no longer with us.
Howard’s friends also experience his private duel and personal challenge: everyone sees his work in danger, which is all they have left. He just got divorced and his daughter hates him. One way or another, he also missed something important in his life. life; Claire has devoted her entire life to her work, has never formed a family, and worries about being too old, that her time has passed; Simon discovers that he has a disease that will eventually kill him, has just become a father and does not want to tell his family what is going on.
The actors who play the representative characters (love, time and death) will connect deeply with each of these characters. Death will connect with Simon and help him accept his destiny; love will do so with Whit, who will try to find his daughter, and Time with Claire. These three stories will be interspersed with Howard’s intrigue and his path to acceptance, which will be complemented by group therapy with like-minded people.
Death is the fate to which all living beings are condemned, no matter who they are in life, no matter what they have, because in the end we will all die, a painting that illustrates very well this idea is Finis gloriae mundi by Juan de Valdés Leal, a work in which the painter represents several decaying bodies, where the bishop’s luxurious coffin contrasts with the very poor coffins in the background , while a divine hand holds a balance alluding to the judgment of souls.
Thus, Hidden Beauty introduces us to a totally successful man who suffers the death of his daughter. Thus, from the beginning, history reminds us that death is the same for all. Out of curiosity, Will Smith himself discovered during filming that his father was Once again, death appears for all.
For the protagonist of Hidden Beauty, it is impossible to conceive that his daughter died before him, without having lived long enough. But as the film suggests, time is just a perception; although we can measure it, we use it freely. On the other hand, love is the force that is present in everything around us, including pain.
“Death is very felt when the father is alive. –