A human relationship would be fleeting and he would be pretending the whole time. He could of course reveal his true nature to Susan but would she really want to grow old with Death itself?
Even if she did, they would have to constantly hide this terrifying truth from other people - can you go to garden parties and have dinner with friends while concealing something this big? Probably not, and if the secret got out it would disrupt the course of history itself. Death was very clear that his true identity remain a secret, and only revealed himself to Bill and the old lady who were both on their way out.
No, Death wanted to possess Susan and take her soul with him into eternity
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Threadkiller (3089)
4 years ago
You pose some interesting philosophical dilemmas but still within the context of the film it doesn't really explain why Joe wouldn't simply consider living out his life with Susan in his human body. I mean the fact that he was planning to take her soul with him, ending her human life (aka killing her) makes it clear that he wasn't taking into consideration the ethical ramifications beyond his immediate desires to be with Susan. Simply living out a human life with her would be the less extreme & unfair option from Susan's perspective.
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Drooch (5333)
4 years ago
Yep, he was selfish and thought true love was meant taking whatever he wanted… until Bill gave him that epic speech and told him to ‘tell her everything there is to know about yourself and let the chips fall where they may’
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Threadkiller (3089)
4 years ago
Interestingly you're bringing up another thing I didn't understand which is why it was such a dilemma for Joe to simply reveal the truth to Susan & trust/hope she would accept it. Sure it would have been a shock to her but I think she was so in love by that point that she probably would have accepted him anyway. He all but tells her anyway & she still doesn't have any sort of dramatic reaction to the revelation. She was literally begging him to stay but for some arbitrary reason he still "had to" leave.
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Drooch (5333)
4 years ago
The film doesn’t go into the technicalities of the supernatural world it posits, it’s happy to leave plenty of mystery ‘multiply that by infinity, take it to the depths of forever and you still won’t have the faintest clue what I’m talking about’
In order to be with Joe Susan must accompany him to the afterlife and that means her dying, those are the rules as far as Meet Joe Black is concerned. Susan gets a glimpse of this during ‘it feels like we’re taking off’ when she says ‘you’re someone else’.
Death knows she has fallen in love with a combination of the coffee shop guy and his new inhabitant, he does the decent thing and let’s her live a full life with the coffee shop guy.
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Threadkiller (3089)
4 years ago
"The film doesn’t go into the technicalities of the supernatural world it posits,"
Yeah and that's kind of my point. Joe has no issue explaining the nature of his omnipotent agency whenever it suits him but the film's conclusion decides to hinge so much on an unexplained hurdle for which I postulated a pretty easy solution from his perspective. One that Susan would most likely prefer over having her life ended.
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Drooch (5333)
4 years ago
I’m not convinced Susan wanted to consciously marry Death itself housed in a meat puppet. She clearly liked coffee shop guy and according to the film’s supernatural rules that was her best option.
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Threadkiller (3089)
4 years ago
I'm not fully convinced she'd be okay with it either but I'm definitely sure she would more likely be into that idea than what Joe actually had in store for her.
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Drooch (5333)
4 years ago
She ended up with the coffee shop guy that she fell in love with at the start. Are you saying she’d prefer to marry the grim reaper wearing that guy’s skin?
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