CriticSociety- film reviews

Review

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Director

David Fincher

Year

2008

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Monday, January 19, 2009

Curious indeed, the case of a man who’s born old and instead of aging rejuvenates. So much can be done of that. It’s intriguing, to begin with. I never expected the film to explain it. Why, after all, can a man be born old and rejuvenate until his death as a baby. Any explanation would be superfluous and immediately invalidated by any rules of logic. If this story is to work, it has to be as a fable, as a self-admitted fantasy with the sole purpose of telling a tale with that extraordinary premise and make something original of it. It is, as with any story, quite a valid artifice and one I was willing to play ball with. Impossible task, I sadly found it to be.

That is because the film is not at all about this extraordinary case. What I mean is, it pretends to be, but it’s really not. The film is presented in a pompous but I have to admit very beautiful coating of exquisite photography (Claudio Miranda), beautiful music (Alexandre Desplat), stunning makeup and production design and faultless if lifeless performances (I’ll elaborate on this last token later on). Yet, the story is not at all haunting after it has been established that Benjamin Button, a child born with normal size but horrible afflictions that usually pertain to the old age, raised, ironically, in a nursing home for the elder, is in fact no different to any other children, at least psychologically speaking, because when it comes to his physique he’s quite the opposite: his development is in reverse.

Benjamin is, thus, the luckiest of all men who have been on this planet in regards to his health: he’s got afflictions aplenty when born and finds a natural cure in his grown that only augments his capacities and vitality and leaves a trail of incapacities in the past. Though his mother died at childbirth and his father neglected him, Benjamin finds a loving adoptive mama in Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a character so poorly developed she just fills a requisite for the story, giving ol’ Ben so much love he hardly even notices his situation because he’s so strong-willed and sure of himself thanks to that lady.

Some of this is so similar to Forrest Gump (1994) it figures that the scripter of both is the same, Eric Roth, who this time borrowed the original story from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short and expanded it into full length with his (I figure) trademark elements of unconditional love and lack of fear for the unexpected giving an otherwise outcast enough tools to face the world and become a champion in it.

Only Button is no Gump and we can see he’s smart enough to know what he’s doing, so, even though some of his antics are exciting, we’re never much into him because he pretty much has the same choices that we all have; he makes something of some, nothing of others, and that’s the way it goes for all of us. When he finally has a choice, as we all do, to settle, he does so with his life-long love Daisy (Cate Blanchett), and soon enough and quite cowardly decides that because of his peculiar situation he can’t go on with it. What? He’s got a midlife crisis is what he’s got, similar to that of the guys who find their fortune at 50 and decide that they should buy a Ferrari like they always wanted, and who the hell cares about their children, let the good wife raise them, he’s busy enough making bucks and enjoying them!

So I propose this: strip the “enchanting” story from the extraordinary premise and all you’ve got is the story of a real bastard who uses his best excuse to avoid responsibility and live his bachelor life to its fullest. Even Brad Pitt can’t pull that off without some of us noticing the scam. And that’s what I said earlier that I would delve upon: Pitt and Blanchett are excellent… But their roles are nothing really unconventional. I’ll tell you who’s a standout: Tilda Swinton in a rather bittersweet segment that by the way could be in any movie and isn’t made special by the aging situation either.

Postscript: I only unfortunately realized after the film was over that the script was based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. I was already infuriated so I had to look that up and you can already expect my nerdy statement that the story is much better over there, so I’ll skip that. I’ll just say that Fitzgerald was wise enough to give his character a personality and psychology that agreed with his physical age at every stage. That worked! The film just makes Benjamin immature for no reason. Another old man who looked young and acted it just for the hell of it comes to mind: Twilight (2008)’s Edward Cullen.

Gon C Curiel en Twitter | CriticSociety en Twitter | CriticSociety en Facebook

Share on Facebook | Share on Twitter