Sometimes, the most emotional stories ask us to suspend disbelief. The fairytales and the fantasies that move us to understand that magic can be real and how a person chooses to handle it could change their lives. Yet, in many of those cases, there’s a lesson about fate and the significance of a person’s choice. Ned Benson’s latest musical drama, The Greatest Hits, explores this concept through a bold, heartbreakingly vulnerable film that places different kinds of love and grief at the center of the narrative.
If Back to the Future changed course, where would Marty McFly be? That’s what we’re dealing with in The Greatest Hits—a film that follows Lucy Boynton’s Harriet through a spiraling grief where she continuously travels to the past where her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet) is still alive. She later meets Justin H. Min’s David and begins to fall for him, but the looming terrors of death and time force her hand and get in the way of their burgeoning romance.
Benson marries music and grief beautifully in a story that presents a universal truth, whether viewers know tremendous losses or not. Grief hurts; it stings, and it perseveres, and it demands to be felt. And music always plays a role in everything that many of us do. There’s a conversation in the trailer where David says, “I love how music can do that,” to which Harriet replies, “What,” and he follows up with, “Pull you back to some moment in time.” He doesn’t realize that it’s literal for her, but what he says speaks to something every person in the world can understand the indescribable depth of. Whether it’s a song that reminds you of the best night of your life or the worst, the way music achieves this is perhaps one of the greatest gifts we have in life.
In addition, The Greatest Hits asks a lot of questions. Would you change the past if it meant changing every little detail about the future just to save someone’s life, or would you let it be? Let the simmering effects of grief change and become a part of you. In most cases, especially in film and TV, the idea remains that things happen for a reason. After all, that’s what Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” It’s a reflection of the real world and human experiences, where we know for a fact that we have no control over some of the things that happen to us.
But the film’s final twist looks into something deeper—an idea about human life and how that comes into question when selfless decisions and sacrifices come into play. For the sake of keeping this spoiler-free, I’ll opt out of analyzing or discussing too much of it, but whether this is a film fans will loathe or adore comes down to how each viewer would feel about the decisions that are made.
Still, through every transition, every memory, every future moment and past, The Greatest Hits tells a story about our vast capacity to love and our ability to move forward. It explores human emotions with profound conversations, and it digs into the perils of grief through actual means of counseling, led by the incomparable Retta. It’s a bold exploration of life, death, and time travel, impressively woven into an hour and thirty-eight minutes, leaving viewers with much to think about, if nothing else. The cast is incredible, and despite the familiar tropes the film borrows from, the narrative feels unique enough to be thoroughly riveting from start to finish.
The Greatest Hits begins streaming on April 12 on Hulu.
First Featured Image | Official Poster Credit: ©Searchlight Pictures