476 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

[Rich Malloy]

Thanks for your post, Svevan. I can't agree with you that any part of the film "clicked", though I certainly agree that the Pitt/Blanchette relationship was the only portion of the film that seemed to have any purpose at all. Chuck the whole "aging backward" conceit, and there might have been something resembling a film narrative stretched over all three acts. And, after all, why maintain the "aging backward" conceit - or even Fitzgerald's title - when all else was jettisoned?

This film demanded scholarship and supplements akin to a "Brazil: Love Conquers All" approach, starting with a history of the script's development illustrating how Fitzgerald's short story was slowly debased into some Gumpian narrative, a brief work of farce transformed into a sentimental historical pageant as it worked its way through the Hollywood maw. There would be much mockery over the needless framing device and its equally pointless Katrina setting; the transformation of the arch, pithy 3rd person prose into a treacly 1st person diary; the inclusion of sophomorically "Fitzgeraldian" elements as Mr. Gateau's clocktower that (aha!) runs backwards (surely, there must be some symbolism here!); the interchangeability of tugboat and shrimpboat captains in the Gumpian universe; Hollywood's affinity for magical negroes with hearts of gold, plantation manners, and just the right cornpone dialect ("birthin' babies!"). One could wrap it up with a discussion of what happens to good directors who go chasing Oscar gold, with citations to Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" and the like.

But that's what you might get had Criterion actually developed this release themselves, rather than merely branding it for money. For myself, the mere inclusion of this film doesn't debase the Collection; rather, it's Criterion's willingness to whore out the Wacky C for a release it had nothing whatsoever to do with developing. It is my very great hope that the principals of the Criterion Collection are even now engaged in an ongoing internal debate about the very grave potential of diluting or degrading the Criterion brand via the practice.

[Caged Horse]

Zodiac I loved, but a critic of Jones' intelligence resorting to such hagiographic hyperbole only discourages me from Button.

[so lightly here]

I never saw the film before last night. David Fincher is a careful and perhaps overly cautious Hollywood moviemaker. He is usually a prosaic but attentive craftsman. I would never use the word artist in describing him and I doubt he would. His most interesting work comes when he is most wreckless, which is not that wreckless (say "Fight Club"), and I guess you could add "Seven" though that seemed to boarder on unrelenting pornographic violence. In "Zodiac" he seems to find a comfortable space in which to work, perhaps because he was personally interested in the San Francisco he knew during the time the movie takes place.

He seems to be erratic directing actors. If the actors are good they usually turn in a descent performance, if they are bad they remain so with (or without) his direction. Brad Pitt seems to be an exception in that he has been both terrible, great and good (in respectively, "Seven", "Fight Club" and "TCCOBB").

As I watched the first half of "TCCOBB" I found myself trying desperately to keep myself awake. The CGI stuff which I have always hoped would someday be able to transport me to a certain era without me being conscientiously aware of it has never happened to me in any movie by any director - CGI seems to render things with its own style that is as recognizable as matte drawings were. The movie had a dullingly long feel to it but in retrospect the overall sadness of the characters' situations made the pacing seem somewhat logical by the time the movie ended.

I was particularly annoyed by the constant repeating of the hurricane theme as it ran through both the story told in the present and for some unknown reason in the flashbacks of BB's little life. The "old man who kept getting hit by lightning" bit got very tired, very quickly and seemed out of place in this director's usually cautious hands (it seemed like he was trying some early P. T. Anderson bit for no known reason).

That said, by the end of this Hollywood adaptation I had to say it could have been much worse, but that only says how bad most Hollywood movies are today. I did not watch any of the extras but expect them to be the typical fair of movie studios - that would be hagiographic in nature. Jeez, those are usually so hard to get through. Hope I am wrong - if I ever get around to disc 2.

[solaris72]

The best review I've read yet.

[Napier]

I would have to agree with you solaris. A truly deserving review. =D>

[Antoine Doinel]

Criterion posts a chat with production designer Donald Burt and property master Hope Parrish as well as some other bits and bobbles.

[HistoryProf]

The best review I've read yet.

dammit...now i have to watch this piece of crap with a print out of this review on the table in front of me while it plays =D> =D> =D>

I was curious to see what Kent Jones would say about this unfortunate film in his essay. Alas, in the opening paragraph:

I don’t think any of us, however, would have guessed that Fincher, with Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, would achieve a vision of time so heartbreakingly acute as to rival those of John Ford and Orson Welles.

*speechless*

Every second of Benjamin Button, every shot and every cut, every gesture and every facial expression, every turn in its narrative and every visual effect, is devoted to the contemplation of time’s passing.

The question is, is there any movie that doesn't contemplate time's passing, even by virtue of having a narrative in which one event impacts upon another? "Every shot and every cut" made me laugh, because I didn't realise visual mastery extended to TV-style coverage and 3-second average shot lengths for most scenes. From this film, it seems Fincher has a hard-on for doing as many set-ups as possible, especially including as many of them as he can in the final cut.

With Pitt, he achieves a character who not only breaks every dramatic rule in the screenwriting playbook but amounts to a potent and moving archetype.

When your titular character is a vacuum, the words "potent" and "moving" seem a little eccentric.

Fincher is a director who knows his craft inside and out. He is also an artist who knows what to use it for, which is why amazement over the seamless technical feat of creating Benjamin out of so many different sources and disciplines tends to disappear early on. In film after film made in the digital era, technical wizardry is the tail that wags the dog. For Fincher, it is just another expressive tool.

Amazement does indeed disappear early on, for me along the lines of: "There's a CGI shot." "And another." "That's all computers." "More compositing." I'm trying to think of a single instance of technical wizardry not being an expressive tool and am coming up blank.

And the film’s beautifully measured pace, set like Pitt’s performance to New Orleans time, never stops to linger over this or that technical achievement.

But lingering, instead of such over-editing, would go a much better way to make an audience absorb something and then be able to feel its loss. The movie just rattles headlong through unconnected incidents in an attempt to feign plot and scope.

This must be the most ludicrous, unconvincing piece of effusion Criterion has ever included in a release.

Have Kent Jones and Ben Lyons ever been seen in the same room at the same time? :-k

[MoonlitKnight]

Compared to most Oscar bait movies these days, I still think this one is a cut above. Fincher adds enough cynicism to the story to make it work (I don't think Spielberg would've followed suit), and I loved the cinematography.

[cdnchris]

I do have to admit after watching the documentary and learning that either Spielberg or Ron Howard could have directed this that it could have turned out a lot worse. I don't hate Spielberg like a lot of members here but I can only imagine how much sappier this film could have been if he had done it. I can also only imagine how much more uninteresting and stale this film would have been if Howard had done it.

[Napier]

I think swimming horses could even have directed it, and it would still be a steaming pile of shit.

[flyonthewall2983]

A director more prone to sentimentality would have made this instantly stale and boring in my eyes. And there is that in places of Button, and there were a few things I didn't much care for either (almost all of Queenie's scenes and the lead-up to the car accident), but the emotion that rides through the story swept me up. The really strange thing is that every Fincher movie back to Fight Club I had no interest in seeing, but once I saw them I was hooked. Same goes for this too, but I didn't get the immediate satisfaction I had watching Panic Room or Zodiac. I'm sure time will be the judge for me, as whether or not it's a film I can say delivered or not.

[AlanP]

The best review I've read yet.

Fantastic! I didn't mind the movie too much (I can't hate anything with Cate Blanchett in it - I purchased and sat through The Gift, for God's sake), but I still found the review very funny. The best line:

One day WWII happens and Lt. Dan's shrimping boat is drafted in the war effort.

[djproject]

Apologies for drugging up old titles ... but stirring the pot is a good thing to do every now and then.

This is probably my favourite amongst my least-liked/slightly-disliked films. There's no denying the effort and craft that went into it as David Fincher never does anything half-ass. There's also no denying the sincerity that everyone who worked on it put into it from the cast to the crew. But the film falls short in two major ways:

1) The source material and the Adaptation. scenario

The scenario is of course named after the film, which deals with the dilemma of taking a very particularly written book and adapt it into a movie. This really becomes clear when Charlie Kaufman speaks with his agent* quotes the New York Times book review of The Orchid Thief and declares "there's no story" and dubs it "sprawling New Yorker shit". For someone who earlier swept off Robert McKee - and then later sought out his advice in desperation - Charlie knows that without a story, it does not work as a film. For Hollywood. Granted those of us with discriminating tastes for film are fully aware of films that *don't* have to follow the three-act (or five-act) dramatic structure. (In fact, there are those who actively seek out those films too.) But Hollywood can only really do Hollywood and they need a story.

* I'm very sure the casting of Ron Livingston as the "super agent" was deliberate: Peter Gibbons plays a combination of Lumbergh and Drew. Speaking of people involved, it's amusing that Spike Jonze and Tilda Swinton intersect between these two films.)

Fitzgerald's story is not really a story. It's more of an account of someone's life. It's a neat conceit and it does appeal to those who think "high concept" (something both "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and The Orchid Thief interestingly have). But it does not have much else to it. You either have to find some workaround (like what ended up being Adaptation.) or you "make [a story] up" (like what The Curious Case of Benjamin Button did). Now you are under the mercy of whoever is writing the script. While I can respect Eric Roth's efforts, I really cannot help but think this is a retread of Forrest Gump in terms of narrative, even if it dares to go into different areas (let's face it, Robert Zemeckis is no David Fincher when it comes anthropology and the human condition =] ). I could stand Forrest Gump the first time around; I don't need a retread.

I am really curious (pun slightly intended) about Robin Swicord's script. I know that Fincher was concerned about the heavy jazz influence on it but it almost makes me wonder if it was the better tact to take with it.

2) Hollywood making art

When I hear Kathleen Kennedy or Frank Marshall or Eric Roth or David Fincher talk about how they wanted to make a film that was more sincere, more heartfelt, more human, more honest, more artful, I think they are being absolutely sincere with it. It's easy to brush it off as just pandering P.R. because "they are Hollywood" but I think this is a case where their intentions were not only in the right place but they were sincere ones at that. But the problem is - and this is where I go back to the side of the cynics - they are Hollywood.

I've described it before as someone who is trained to paint like Thomas Kinkade (bear with me here on this comparison; hold thy fire =] ). Yeah the painter makes money and does the job well. But then the painter decides he should paint more like Thomas Cole or Albert Bierstadt or Caspar David Friedrich. So the painter labours to make that Cole/Bierstadt/Friedrich painting ... but in the end, it ends up looking like a Thomas Kinkade: "pretty" but very little of substance.

I know I can say with some competence (and even, dare I say, authority) because I think about other films that not only touch on those moments but are also pretty much only about those moments. In other words, they are not made by a graduate of either McKee's or Syd Field's seminars. For instance, if I want to look at the deep interconnectedness of us with the world around us as well as the bright and dark side of humanity, I can watch both Baraka and Samsara. If I want to look at the human life as a kind of microcosm of a larger story, I can watch The Tree of Life. Finally, if I want to watch something about the seeming eternity of love as well as the beauty of the mundane moment, I can watch Wings of Desire. The last one was very appropriate to evoke because that was (in)famously remade into City of Angels. And while I am painfully aware that its director, Brad Silberling, was going to a bad patch in his life, City of Angels felt like a *very* pale shadow of its ancestor film (especially when you consider Rilke was swapped for Hemingway).

Now I honestly don't think The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not without its sincere moments. The moment I genuinely liked most was near the end

(This probably doesn't need a spoiler tag but just in case)

when Benjamin dies as an eighty-year old infant

as it reminds me of T.S. Eliot and in particular The Four Quartets. And again, I have no doubts that everyone who worked on it gave it their 100 to 110% (the latter is especially the case for a film helmed by Fincher). But in the end, I felt I just saw a Kinkade painting.

[hearthesilence]

I saw this when it came out and couldn’t have cared less about it, and I was far from alone in that regard, but I was also puzzled at the good reviews it did get from the likes of Dave Kehr, Richard Brody (who still considers it one of Fincher’s very best) and especially Kent Jones who brought it up during a discussion with Olivier Assayas around 2009 and flat out dismissed disparaging comparisons to “Forrest Gump.” (I didn’t know he also wrote the liner notes for the home release.)

Finally saw it again on a plane ride and surprisingly was taken by it. There were plenty of elements that didn’t completely win me over, like the framing device of reading a journal or the portrayal of race relations in the South that was sanitized and watered down, but they came off as bumps in the road rather than fatal flaws that sunk the film. Others have pointed out all the similarities to “Forrest Gump,” but while they may be numerous, they actually feel very shallow - the story elements may be recycled but they’re fundamentally very different films. We don’t have a character weaved into big moments in history in a way that often trivializes it - this time history is very much a backdrop, more distant yet far more encompassing. How it progresses through the film, and how these characters grow more wary of their mortality and the passing of time feels much more affecting this time around. I imagine getting older with 15 more years on me makes a difference, but so does the fact that it’s been an extremely tumultuous 15 years in world history whereas life in the U.S. during the ‘90s was comparatively static, especially for someone who wasn’t an adult. Back when Brexit first happened, I remember someone lamenting what it meant to younger people like himself - the most devastating byproduct of the countless lost opportunities would be the numerous relationships that would no longer come into being. It really drove home how ephemeral everything can be in the unforgiving currents of history, of really any event beyond our control (not just world events on a mass scale). That’s the lingering feeling I get from this film.

[Mr Sausage]

I feel anyone’s frustration with the dismissive comparisons to Forrest Gump, but I disagree that the similarities are shallow. The similarities are structural: they are picaresques that use the figure of the naif, someone whose outsider status renders them innocent of the complex understandings of the fallen world of experience, through which to view the passage of time and history and comment on the nature of human relationships. It’s really the details that are incidental.

It’s the criticism that’s shallow, tho’. Two movies can do the same thing, and one can do it poorly and the other well. Obviously.

[Black Hat]

I watched this once on my laptop 09 while I had the flu and was also taken by it but, wrote off my reaction as delirium. Throw in my reflexive hostility to those few years, post-Social Network, where it felt like Fincher was being shoved down our throats as a genius auteur and I grew more dismissive of it but, your write up HTS makes me want to revisit it. I don't remember much about it in the terms you wrote about but, what I do remember was the exploration of a life long star crossed love while sitting on the doorstep of death and thinking to myself, is it beauty or romanticized suffering? Still beautiful, but existing in a different universe, the one of poets I guess. Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn't revisit it.

[therewillbeblus]

I'm That Guy whose initial reaction was, 'This is an even lamer version of Forrest Gump'. Though I've been revisiting Fincher's work relatively often over the last few years, and have found almost every film I was cool on has improved in esteem. Maybe this will join the chorus, but I'm not holding my breath

[Mr Sausage]

I should throw in that I hated this movie and think it's Fincher's worst (and have probably made the cheap Forrest Gump crack myself). I just don't think Fincher does sentimentality well. His style is heavy and brooding, and Button needs a kind of skip to it if it's going to work. But I'm also due a revisit, so who knows.

[Black Hat]

I've never gotten Fincher. I've thought so little of him that I've yet to seek out all his films with the last one I saw being The Social Network. I think the one I enjoyed the most was Zodiac but, I was an oaf at the time. What I would call his best film today is Panic Room but, if we're going to talk the best thing he's ever done I'd say it's the George Michael video for Freedom by a country mile, followed by his work for Madonna and Michael Jackson. Are any of you a Fincher fan? He doesn't seem to connect with cinephiles the way his contemporaries do but, has more of a populist appeal than say a PTA, Wes Anderson, Baumbach or Linklater does. It's interesting.

edit: Mr. S - Agree about Button, it was a bit plodding with all the bed ridden scenes and could have used more of a trot. Am I mixing things up, this was the era of Sea Biscuit, or was there a horse riding element in it?

[therewillbeblus]

Yes, I'm a fan, and I think his immediate two noirs post-Social Network are brilliant. It's no secret that he's a rigorous formalist, and that's what a lot of people I know get from his work. They don't analyze his films so much as enjoy the surface pleasures in them (which, I think, are getting at something deeper). I believe that his life goal is to make a movie as perfect as (and similar in tone and theme to) Chinatown

[John Cope]

I should throw in that I hated this movie and think it's Fincher's worst (and have probably made the cheap Forrest Gump crack myself). I just don't think Fincher does sentimentality well. His style is heavy and brooding, and Button needs a kind of skip to it if it's going to work. But I'm also due a revisit, so who knows.

And I don't think he does the fairy tale form well. At all. I don't think he comprehends what is essential about it. And the elements of his technique and style you identify are also a big part of the reason for that too.

[Black Hat]

Yes, I'm a fan, and I think his immediate two noirs post-Social Network are brilliant. It's no secret that he's a rigorous formalist, and that's what a lot of people I know get from his work. They don't analyze his films so much as enjoy the surface pleasures in them (which, I think, are getting at something deeper). I believe that his life goal is to make a movie as perfect as (and similar in tone and theme to) Chinatown

That makes a lot of sense. I really should catch up with the films of his I've missed, always wanted to see Gone Girl & Mank, revisit some of the others. How do you fancy him both in terms of his peers and historically?

[Mr Sausage]

I should throw in that I hated this movie and think it's Fincher's worst (and have probably made the cheap Forrest Gump crack myself). I just don't think Fincher does sentimentality well. His style is heavy and brooding, and Button needs a kind of skip to it if it's going to work. But I'm also due a revisit, so who knows.

And I don't think he does the fairy tale form well. At all. I don't think he comprehends what is essential about it. And the elements of his technique and style you identify are also a big part of the reason for that too.

Has there been anyone who’s equally good at both noir and fairy tales? They seem like mutually exclusive conceptions of the world.

[therewillbeblus]

It's been a while since I watched it, but wouldn't Alias Nick Beal count as both?

[knives]

Right, I feel likes there’s been a few examples of that mixture. Mexico seems good at that. Ripstein has a few I like for example such as The Place Without Limits.