‘The Greatest Hits’ Review: Love and Loss Meet at the Intersection of Music and Time Travel in Ned Benson’s Grand Romance | SXSW 2024
It can be hard to move on from the loss of a loved one when you can’t stop time traveling back to moments you spent together whenever a particular song plays. Nicknamed “Headphones” because she wears them at all times to prevent accidentally hearing something that will send her back, Harriet (Lucy Boynton, Chevalier) has tried everything she can think of to save her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet, the upcoming new Superman) from dying in a car accident. In her search for the elusive record that will send her to the specific point where she thinks she can keep him alive, she meets David (Justin H. Min), who seems like the perfect guy but won’t ever be able to be the only man on her mind.
Writer-director Ned Benson brings with him the perfect expertise to explore complicated love with his previous feature, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, a haunting film released in 2014 in three versions from the perspective of each member of a couple and then from both of them. The Greatest Hits is a film all about memory and the way in which it’s easy to idealize imperfect moments that, upon reflection, seem all the more idyllic. Harriet is literally transported back to relive them again, distracted from unpleasantness by clinging desperately to a chance to be with someone she misses more than anything, trying to will the stubbornness Max exhibits that prevents Harriet from stopping his death from happening each and every time.
The rules of time travel in The Greatest Hits aren’t complex. If Harriet starts hearing a song that she and Max previously heard together, she gets pulled back for the duration of the song. She’s realized that she can change what she does but not what anyone else does, hence the impossible feat of saving Max. While she confides in her friend Morris (Austin Crute, They/Them), everyone else simply believes that she’s having a seizure. Morris does try to get her to move on with her life, knowing that, every night, she goes home, sits in Max’s beloved chair, and grabs a record from the “Untested” box to see if it’s the one that will finally fix things.
The Greatest Hits is, above all, a grand romance. Its effectiveness in that area is due largely to Min, who is immediately charming as a new member of Harriet’s support group. Upon finding the last record that both of them are hunting for in a record store, declares that, since he found it first, he’s going to get it and she won’t. He’s compassionate and going through his own loss, that of both his parents just a few months apart, and he’s been left running their store with his sister. It’s a far more overtly endearing turn than what the talented Min delivered in last year’s Shortcomings and the Emmy-winning Netflix limited series Beef. David feels genuine, and he’s willing to make an authentic effort to be there for someone who isn’t ready to be fully open with him. It doesn’t hurt that he and Boynton have natural chemistry.
The support group meetings Harriet and David attend are full of soulful wisdom from Retta’s group leader, like how “losing someone you love can feel like a mental illness” and how, in several languages, the word for love is the same as the word for suffering. Those somber sentiments are well-balanced by cheesy lines that its characters recognize as such, like David thanking Harriet for “setting the night on fire” after a date, immediately shaking his head in disbelief that he thought something like that would sound cool. Morris has his own memorable slate of funny one-liners, highlighted by “I’m still single as a dollar bill, so the space-time continuum seems to be intact.”
The Greatest Hits succeeds at making its premise feel believable, spending little time on diving into how it could be possible or having Harriet try hard to prove that she’s not just hallucinating. The sounds of the record player and the colors that flash as Harriet is about to get pulled back make it feel like the audience is going back with her, and her expressed sentiment that sometimes she wishes she didn’t miss Max this much is resonant. Like all time travel movies, the science isn’t necessarily sound and the resolution may not win everyone over, but this music-infused love story is a true pleasure to watch and behold.
Grade: B+
This review is from the 2024 SXSW Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures is set to release The Greatest Hits on Hulu on April 12.
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