Jan. 14, 2008
Some of you will have already noticed that the original Wall of Paul slogan, "Paul Tatara on Movies (and so forth)," now reads "Paul Tatara on Pop Culture (and so forth)." In the winter of 2007, when we launched this site, I knew I'd initially draw readers who were familiar with my CNN and Goodauthority movie coverage, so I mostly wrote about movies. But I live in the same world everyone else inhabits, and I contemplate a lot of things besides motion pictures. It was my goal, then, to eventually examine music, sports, politics, religion, firecrackers, action figures, babies, fast food, heroes, hypocrites, air conditioning, parades, cream puffs, and a slew of other topics that have come to shape my consciousness. Thus the altered, and far more accurate, slogan.Contact Paul
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
dir. David Fincher
.jpg "Button 1 (shrunk).jpg")
David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which stars Brad Pitt (and an apparently mind-boggling computer program) as a character who gets younger the longer he lives, is that oh-so-familiar brand of Oscar-grab picture that’s presented like a cinematic compliment to the Sistine Chapel, but reveals stucco when you scrape at the paint.
I know from experience that you criticize these creatures at your own risk, since not joining the hallelujah chorus suggests you can’t be “moved” by a “life affirming message.” But “Benjamin Button” - like its far more stomach-churning precursor, the dreaded “Forrest Gump” - doesn’t really have a message, unless you consider “Things sure are random, but keep on truckin’” to be existential insight. Millions of people will, of course, because it’s already been decreed that this movie is significant. That’s why it’s so long, and they released it in December.
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The only problem is, it’s not all that good. At least not as drama, which is supposed to be the whole point. Thanks to Claudio Miranda’s breathtaking cinematography, and Donald Graham Burt’s sumptuous but understated production design, everything looks like a gazillion dollars. And Fincher cuts together at least one genuinely thrilling sequence, during which a tugboat that Benjamin works on is attacked by a Japanese submarine. Unfortunately, “Benjamin Button”’s screenplay, which was broadly adapted from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, religiously sidesteps momentum and character development in favor of a string of soppy, pseudo-profound Hallmark moments.
You know the drill. Because the characters speak with heavy southern accents, and this is a big, fat Hollywood production, the banter repeatedly collapses into overcooked homily grits. Both the narration and dialogue serve up the types of sentiments you might find on a souvenir plate hanging in your aunt’s kitchen: “You never know what’s comin’ for ya.”…“Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.”…“We’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?”
That’s right. Hang on baby, Friday’s comin’. At the risk of belaboring the point, Roth didn't adapt Fitzgerald to write this thing. He adapted his own screenplay to "Forrest Gump."
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.jpg "Button 2 (shrunk).jpg")
The story is is set into motion by the reading of the diary of an old woman (Cate Blanchett), who’s waiting for the Lord to come and retrieve her soul while Hurricane Katrina bears down on her hospital. Fincher leaps back and forth in time while the events unfold, an approach that hardly helps build a head of steam.
It turns out the old woman's name is Daisy, and she grew up in New Orleans in the 1930s. There, she met a bizarre man-child named Benjamin who lived in a nursing home operated by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a young African-American woman. Benjamin’s dad (Jason Flemyng) panicked when his wife died while giving birth to a baby that looked like a miniature senior citizen, so he dropped young (or old) Benjamin on Queenie’s doorstep, then ran away like a coward. Don’t worry, though. He shows up again years later, to little or no effect.
Virtually the entire picture is comprised of people arriving and leaving in shifts while Benjamin continues his ass-backwards aging process, which must mean something metaphorical or they wouldn’t spend all that time and money making it happen. You got me, though. Outside of the last twenty minutes of the story, during which Benjamin un-ages his way toward death, there’s not a thing going on that couldn’t occur just as logically if he aged in the same tedious direction as everyone else.
.jpg "Button 3 (shrunk).jpg")
The only signs of real life are a handful of gentle scenes between Benjamin and the wife of a British ambassador to Russia (Tilda Swinton) with whom he has an affair. Swinton milks this small part for all its worth; even her sighs are complex. She’s a far more interesting foil for Benjamin than Blanchett’s character, a pretentious, selfish bohemian dancer who’s under-written and, frankly, isn’t the least bit likable.
Blanchett is just peaches-and-cream complected scenery anyway, when you get right down to it. The narrative simply flows along from one life situation to the next - work, thwarted romance, love, death - with Pitt’s makeup-aged head digitally attached to bodies of varying height and physical well-being...except near the middle of Benjamin's life, where he looks like JFK on vacation at Hyannis Port. He even has a little sailboat.
I’ve seen Pitt give some respectable performance in the past, but this meaty pork roast of a role seems to barely interest him. He appears pre-maturely aged in voice and gait, which is good. But the psychology of Benjamin’s predicament is virtually ignored. Think of the nuances of behavior an actor like Johnny Depp could have gotten out of this part— the faltering voice, the smallest, telling gestures. Pitt, on the other hand, just stands there and looks at people, and it makes for less than invigorating viewing. At least Tom Cruise always finds a reason to pump his fists in the air.
Watching “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is like watching “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” except you’re expected to cry every 15 minutes. The introduction of startling new technology nearly overwhelms everything else in the picture. There's a little bit of profanity, a little bit of drinking, a little bit of violence, and a little bit of sex. Rated R. 7,294 minutes, or thereabouts. I lost count right before I died.
Paul Tatara
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bioniclime:
Still think they should have had Jonathan Winters play the role instead of Brad Pitt. He nailed the age-backwards genre back in the last season of Mork and Mindy.
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Robert N. Bernard
wae:
Paul, thanks for (once again) casting light into the cinematic cracks. And since it's a Fincher film, the murky screen sure hides a lot of 'em.
I enjoyed the flick and found the 3 hours went by entertainingly, but it's a White Castle slider served as a 7 course meal.
The aging shtick did serve one very clear purpose, to evoke the pavlovian emotions that arise when babies are born ugly and die tragically. Benji Buttons gives us both in hamfisted sledgehammer strokes, which probably made everybody feel better about sleepwalking through the intervening 3 hours. If there were a drinking game for blank stares, I would have been clinically dead after the first 90 minutes.
I'd add another comparison to your Roger Rabbit and Gump references, because the framing device bugged me as much as anything since Bill Paxton hammed it up with Rose in between Billy Zane freak-outs. The emotional vacuum in the hospital room made every forced revelation and Katrina reference seem completely absurd. The daughter (who couldn't fathom her dance instructor mom might have once ... *gasp* ... been a dancer!) might as well have been written for a confused puppy with a penchant for reading diaries. Because the only thing sadder than a dying baby is a cute puppy reading about a dying baby. Cinematic gold!
ttrentham:
...for confirming that my first instinct to stay the hell away from this movie was absolutely correct.