Meet Joe Black -1998 =link=

Upon release, the major critique was the runtime: 181 minutes (three hours). Reviewers like Roger Ebert called it “too long” but admitted it was “not boring.” The pacing is deliberate, almost glacial. There are long, silent glances. The camera lingers on faces. The score by Thomas Newman is sparse and melancholic.

Playing an otherworldly entity is a difficult task. Pitt utilizes a wide-eyed, almost robotic curiosity that slowly melts into human vulnerability. His performance is a unique blend of "alien" detachment and youthful discovery. Meet Joe Black -1998

Ultimately, Meet Joe Black reminds us that the value of life isn't found in its length, but in the connections we make and the integrity with which we live. As Bill Parrish tells Joe, Upon release, the major critique was the runtime:

Visually and aurally, Meet Joe Black reinforces its themes with a lush, almost reverent style. Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography bathes the world in golden hour light, making every moment—a walk in the park, a family dinner, even Death’s first cup of coffee—feel sacramental. Thomas Newman’s score, with its swirling, hesitant melodies, captures the sensation of time slipping through one’s fingers. The famous sequence of Joe and Susan walking through the city at dusk, framed by fireworks and setting suns, is not merely romantic; it is a visual thesis statement. Beauty is ephemeral, the film argues, and that is precisely what makes it beautiful. The slow pace is a stylistic choice that forces the viewer to inhabit the characters’ heightened awareness, to feel every lingering glance and weighted silence as if time were running out—because, of course, it is. The camera lingers on faces

On its surface, Meet Joe Black is a fantasy romance: Death falls in love with a mortal. But beneath that lurks a dense, philosophical text.