On Screen
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: He's His Own Grandpa
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON Two-bit man-child.
Tools
It's a testament to how far digital special effects have come that the most compelling thing about Benjamin Button isn't how Brad Pitt de-ages so convincingly. As with the simple sketch by F. Scott Fitzgerald that the movie is based on, you buy the premise immediately: An orphaned boy is born old and ages backward. And it's a credit to Pitt that he sells Button—a role that could easily become a mawkish Forrest Gump in a lesser actor's hands—completely. But Cate Blanchett as Daisy, the love of Button's life, shows Pitt up by aging the old-fashioned, boring way and making it every bit as fascinating as Button's reverse journey through most of the 20th century.
The nearly three-hour movie sails by, and director David Fincher's dogged determinedness to get the perfect shot pays off well, too: The film—with its seemingly effortless historical accuracy, rich color palettes, and beautiful cinematography—is real, rich eye candy. There are serious flaws (Button's aging doesn't flow as it should, and his narration, supposedly from a diary, becomes omniscient whenever the story needs it), but those almost make the movie more endearing. And several scenes—especially a midfilm dalliance with Tilda Swinton and a few suspenseful moments where the audience can see doom coming from miles away—are cinematic perfection.
Stranger Personals
Parts of the film go too far: Some imagery connecting hummingbirds
to the souls of the departed suggests that Fincher is trying to evoke
his weepy inner Spielberg, and it feels overly manipulative and false.
The charge commonly leveled against Fincher (especially with last
year's almost sociopathically chilly Zodiac) is that he lacks
heart. This isn't a capital crime for a director, of course: Stanley
Kubrick did just fine without any messy sentimentality getting in the
way. Benjamin Button feels as though Fincher is swaddling
himself in sentimentality and homespun wisdom to prove his humanity.
It's an awkward, unconvincing fit. 
Share via
Speaking for myself, the reason the film fell short was the writing.
With Forest Gump, Roth was able to give the audience a love story that was tangible. Forest & Jenny shared a deep and rich history with one another. They grew up together, played together, received an education together. I could see how a man would fall in love. It's why I still ball my eyes out when he talks to her grave.
But with Benjamin, I was left wanting more. Their shared experiences were rather brief, and I felt that she basically just showed up, and hey, let's move in together.
(Don't worry, NO spoiler) And the ending, well, I had problems with it. It felt like everything Benjamin's mother taught him was discarded and forgotten for lack of courage to live this imparted wisdom: We are all human. We all share this bond. But we all have different paths.
But the film is visually beautiful, and yes, moving at times. (Fincher's still one of my favorites)
I don't know. Maybe it's just me. I'm sure if I watched it while knocking back a few beers, I would have left the theatre in a T-shirt covered with tears and snot.
Merry Christmas.
They aren't unsettling at all. The only thing you'll find unsettling and forced is the relationship with Cate. She's unlikeable even in her prime (The pool scene and after). Pitt was her last resort, and the movie somehow thinks we should pardon that. They never had a connection. There was a scene with them under a table that was interrupted almost immediately, and then there was "write to me." Um, okay. So, when he was her last resort, they buy a house together and constantly fuck. Then she gets pregnant. We were supposed to feel like that's love. I guess it was. Or something.
Although she did come around in the end. She was old and likely bored as hell, so dealing with his dementia felt like the right thing to do. It worked out.
I loved it.
Maybe it was how the undercurrent of the film was how almost every plot point is punctuated with death, and it's meant to show how we should appreciate life, but paired with the grotesque image of a man living out his youth as a near-corpse, it made me feel super-icky.
I'm intrigued by this one, and will generally see anything Fincher does. We'll see how it works out for me.
Gimme a break. It was syrupy, nauseatingly sentimental and Albert Finney made me want to punch the movie screen.
Billy Crudup stalking about, scowl-ridden and whining wasn't especially enticing either.
I don't think I laughed once.
Tim Burton hasn't made a good film in a long time.
I don't suppose I laughed once, either, at least not particularly hard. But I wasn't there for laughs, or for a father/son bond. My interests were, as always, strictly experiential; narrative and comedy are the sorts of things with which people interrupt the trip. I was more engaged with it as a series of images that balanced love for a bucolic past and an outsiders seething contempt for same, all through the gauze of memory (or years of psychedelic use). Or something like that.
The script was a formality, at best.
The stand out scene for me was the "happy couple in love" montage to fucking Beatles while they fucked in front of the fire and painted each other and their period-appropriate apartment while sporting fashions of the day. It reminded me of myself when I was an independently wealthy, backwards-aging Brad Pitt shacking up with a crippled, anorexic redhead.
http://mattpayton.tumblr.com/post/678892…
http://www.scene-stealers.com/blogs/benj…
I wonder how much he got paid for being soooo creative?
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Comments (24) RSS