Finding Completeness When We Are Incomplete

Originally published in December 2016. Movie seen at Oswego 7 Cinemas in Oswego, NY.

A REFLECTION ON THE MOVIE COLLATERAL BEAUTY

Film enthusiast Michael DeNobile discusses 2016 film Collateral Beauty and its themes of Love, Time, and Death.

Love. Time. Death. Ultimately, these three are everyone's hauntings as we shuffle through this mortal coil, a coil as fragile as dominoes: taking a painful amount of Time and Love--risking even Death--that by a mere act of the smallest bit of kinetic energy, and they all fall down, breaking and shattering on the ground.

But when they do all fall down, as they always do, how exactly do we find our way back? Michael DeNobile asks audiences, is it even finding our way back to the path or merely finding a way back to some path or another? In any case, in terms of Love, Time and Death, we seem to always settle for denial.

We hide behind our excuses, addictions, lies that become truths, and blame everyone else but ourselves, enslaving our very selves to a master of Self Pity. And not until we realize that only we--you yourself--possess the very key necessary to unshackle ourselves from these mortal coils by the very choices we make, we will constantly wait for Time to take care of our Loves, most likely until Death.

Michael DeNobile comments that maybe its in that time, when we wrestle with our demons or like Jacob the angel of God Himself, maybe that time isn't wasted. Maybe in that self exile in which we set ourselves apart from life is necessary for us to find our way home--when we grieve the loss of our loved ones, whether they have departed at the sunset or sunrise of their lives, when we grieve the loss of our dreams eviscerated from deep within our hearts, when we grieve the loss of our time pursuing good things while not reaching the pinnacle of worldly success.

And in that darkness, in that pain, through those tears, when the world is but a colorless grey, may we hold on to that collateral beauty, and finally exit the cave of Despair--that cave where we believe if we could only change Love, Time and Death--and see how in our incompleteness, in our brokenness, we are perfectly whole within the bosom of the Universe. We are not islands. We are connected within the deep.