Hidden Beauty: Coping with the Loss of a Loved One

hidden beauty, Collateral Beauty In English, it is a 2016 American film directed by David Frankel.. The film generated many expectations and had a very interesting cast, including names such as: Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Hellen Mirren, Will Smith and Keira Knightley. However, despite the expectations and the acting quality of its actors, the reviews were, in general, negative.

From a cinematographic point of view, The film falls into melodrama, easy tears and an overdose of dialogues and phrases that seek emotion, but remain on the surface.. hidden beauty brings us an interesting topic, but it falls into a too forced sentimentality that is not credible, too hollywood. The New York Christmas setting doesn’t help much either, and makes it a Christmas after-dinner television movie for the whole family.

The proposal is attractive, clearly influenced by Christmas story of Dickens, brings us to a successful man who, after the tragic death of his 6-year-old daughter, finds himself plunged into a deep depression. His colleagues and friends will try to help him and hire three actors to appear in his life as manifestations of three abstract concepts: Love, Death and Time. An allegory of life, an exposition of the main fears we face that brings us closer to a very common problem in society: depression.

Leaving aside the sweetness of the film, the predictability of the plot and the lack of naturalness evident from the beginning, the truth is that Hidden Beauty It turns a tragic situation into a kind of fable or story. In this article, We are not going to focus on the cinematographic aspect, but on the proposal itself, on the lessons we can draw and its relationship with psychology..

Loss in Hidden Beauty

The film begins with a motivational speech given by Will Smith’s character, Howard Inlet, a most successful businessman in the field of advertising. In his speech, he says that there are three things that connect all human beings: love, time and death; “We long for love, we wish we had more time, and we fear death.” Moments later, we witness a very different present, in which Howard has lost his six-year-old daughter and, as a consequence, his enthusiasm for his work, for his friends, and for living. Howard no longer speaks, shows no interest in anything, and is on the verge of crying at every moment.

This death, in addition to plunging him into a depression that prevents him from continuing with his life, has caused him to separate from his wife., as happens in most marriages after the loss of a child. The reasons that lead a couple to separate after the death of their child can be very diverse, but the truth is that it is very common for all kinds of conflicts to arise: that one of the members of the couple handles it “better” than the other. the other, that they blame each other, that one of them cannot overcome it…

The grieving process is a hard and difficult stage for everyone, especially if the grieving is for the death of a child.. In some people, this grief is resolved over time and naturally, going through various phases until reaching acceptance of the situation; However, for others it can become stagnation, a failure to move forward that will end up leading to some type of disorder. In Howard’s case, we see that he suffers from deep depression combined with a state of denial that prevents him from talking about the subject. and relate to others.

Your friends and coworkers are worried about your emotional situation. It is not easy to accept that a person you love and have always seen so full of life suddenly sinks and is unable to move forward; Still, they decide to help him, also motivated by the situation of the company that directly affects them. To do this, they hire a detective who discovers that Howard is writing letters to Love, Death and Time, to the concepts he spoke about in a positive tone at the beginning of the film.

Following this, They decide to hire three actors to appear before him as the embodiment of these concepts.In this way, it will be demonstrated that your mental health is not adequate for work and, in turn, you will be able to realize the situation in which you have been involved.

The Christmas context in which the film takes place is also important, as these are dates in which emotions are on the surface.dates of reflection, of ghosts of the past as in the work of Dickens and of memory of those who are no longer with us.

Allegories and the meaning of death

Howard’s friends are also experiencing their particular grief and personal struggle, all of them see their jobs in danger, which is the only thing they have left.. Whit just got divorced and her daughter hates him, somehow she has also lost something important in her life; Claire has dedicated her entire life to her work, she has never started a family and worries that she is too old, that her time has passed; Simon discovers that he has an illness that will end up killing him, he has just become a father and does not want to tell his family what is happening to him.

The actors who play the allegorical 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 it with Whit, who will try to get closer to his daughter and Time with Claire. These three stories will be intertwined with Howard’s plot and his path to acceptance, which will be complemented by group therapy with people in the same situation.

Death is the destiny to which all living beings are condemned, it does not matter who you are in life, nor does it matter how much you have because, in the end, we are all going to die.. A table that illustrates this idea very well is Finis gloriae mundi by Juan de Valdés Leal, a work in which the painter captured various bodies decomposing, where the luxurious coffin of the bishop contrasts with the very poor coffins in the background, while a divine hand holds a scale in allusion to the judgment of souls.

So, Hidden Beauty presents us with a totally successful man, who suffers the death of his daughter. In this way, from the beginning the story reminds us that death is the same for everyone. As a curiosity, Will Smith himself discovered during filming that his father had little time left to live. Once again, death appears before any of us.

To the protagonist of Hidden Beauty It is impossible for him to conceive that his daughter died before him, without having lived long enough. But as the movie tells us, Time is nothing more than a perception, although we can measure it, we are the ones who use it freely. On the other hand, love is that force that is present in everything that surrounds us., even in pain; that is the collateral beauty that invites you to search and see the film.

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