476 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

[Mr Sausage]

Those examples seem more like general folklore. I was thinking of fairy tales as a naive form of magic tale using wonder and enchantment. But that's not all that strict a definition, so, oh well.

I had no idea that Jose Donoso's Hell Has No Limits was made into a movie, so thanks knives!

[therewillbeblus]

In many ways, noir can feel like a fantastical response to real-life malaise, like fairy tales. The mood I feel when I'm putting on a noir and a fairy tale film might actually be more similar than many other genre pairings. That's not exactly what we're talking about, but it's getting me thinking. Maybe I'm alone in seeking out noirs for "enchantment" though

[Mr Sausage]

Reading noir as a form of fantasy is one of the cooler propositions I've heard in a while. But I think any link between noir and fairy tales is only true in the most general way. I mean, the reason I even asked in the first place if anyone was good at both is that one defining feature of fairy tales is their naivety, and not in the pejorative sense, but in the sense of being childlike in their openness and lack of sophistication or worldliness. Noir on the other hand is totally of the adult world of experience, which is why it tends to be urban, psychological, and involve subjects like sex and crime.

To bring us back to Fincher: Benjamin Button very much imbues its central character, and therefore the film at large since it's filtered through his voice, with a direct, unsophisticated, unstudied decency of heart that defines naivety in the above sense, and yet the movie is shot with the glowering, ominous thickness of Fincher's usual style. I know there are plenty of people who can combine the dark and glowering with the material of folktales, but there's a particular wide-eyed sense of wonder and magic to a fairy tale that just seems at odds with that style.

It's no accident fairy tales are often used in stories about the transition from childhood to adulthood, with naive material becoming mixed up with more complex adult feelings, eg. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.

[therewillbeblus]

That's a good point, and also, in imbuing its central character who is, as I recall, not really someone with any personality, it's almost doomed to fail. I remember Pitt's Button as one of the blandest ciphers I'd seen on screen, and so not only did I not care about what happened to him, the film imbuing nothingness for three hours is just.. boring.

[hearthesilence]

I’ve had mixed feelings about Fincher myself, but it’s interesting to hear or even see him work on something like “The Social Network” (he’s very generous about documenting his work for home video supplements) because on the one hand, he’s very meticulous and demanding and knows exactly what he wants, and on the other hand he’s consciously beholden to a script authored by someone else and clearly thinks of himself as an interpreter. I’ll have to check out the supplements for “Button” - as Chris pointed out, the ‘making of’ feature alone is longer than the film itself!

I don’t think sentimentality plays to his strengths either but there’s something inherently anti-romantic about the fairy tale love story here. It’s a story where the main characters have to accept that the other person can be in love with someone else, and even after they’re brought together, the idea of staying together permanently is never really presented as a viable future - there’s the choice they have to make and accept that goes against the idea. They may be in love but they learn to live for other things besides each other. Even the last stretch reflects a sobering reality of what happens to most marriages that manage to last - instead of a romantic ending, it usually becomes a difficult responsibility and a long and arduous commitment to someone else, all of which is appropriate given what the film’s about.