Plain Old Buttons

Movie Review:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

PG-13 / 2 hrs., 46 min. / 2008

In the first few minutes of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, there is a fascinating flashback about a man who creates an unusual clock for a railway station. Someone needs to take that idea and expand it into a feature film all by itself. But they didn’t, and once the flashback ends, we are left with over two hours of less-interesting material.

Oh, the premise sounds fascinating on paper – that’s why I rented the movie. Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, the film follows the life of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), whose body lives its life backwards. He is born looking eighty years old, and as he grows, his skin loses its wrinkles, his bones lose their arthritis. When he is twenty, he looks sixty; when he is sixty, he looks twenty. His mind, however, moves forward through the normal progression of life from infancy to senility.

Abandoned by his father because of his abnormalities, Benjamin is brought up by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a black servant at a Louisiana old folks’ home. As he grows, he learns about life and death, and how to handle both, from the residents of the home as well as his servant parents. And because of his older looks, his young, adventurous curiosity is often thoroughly whetted as people take him places he never would have gone as a little boy, confess things to him he never would have heard.

As the epic tale unfolds, Benjamin learns to play piano from Mrs. Maple (Edith Ivey), gets a job on a tugboat with Captain Mike (Jared Harris), spends a season in Russia, has an affair with a foreign secretary’s wife (Tilda Swinton), fights a naval skirmish in World War II, and falls in love with Daisy (Cate Blanchett) whom he eventually settles down with.

I once heard a comedian’s routine on how youth is wasted on the young and how much more appropriate it would be to age backwards. And clearly F. Scott Fitzgerald figured the idea could deliver a message. So the potential for an irresistible movie is all there, a movie that takes a fresh look at life and love.

But director David Fincher and writer Eric Roth settle for a movie that only looks innovative on the surface. Its melancholy tone suggests that it has something deep to explore, something poignant that its unusual story is able to present better than other stories. But in the end we are left with nothing new regarding the heartaches of human existence. A friend of mine commented that we’ve heard the same message, only better, in Forrest Gump, and I would agree. I suppose a movie does not need to have a deep purpose, but when its presentation suggests that it does have something new to say, it should say it.

The whole phenomenon of Benjamin’s curiosity is treated throughout as just that: A curiosity. Those who spend enough time in Benjamin’s life to notice the wonder seem to handle it with barely a raised eyebrow. The music score by Alexandre Desplat, which is beautiful in itself, suggests that even when the composer realized what was happening to Benjamin, he merely cocked his head to the side, went “Huh, that’s interesting,” and then ignored it. Not that I am in favor of turning the film into another action movie about a power-hungry government wanting to exploit Benjamin’s powers in some way, but surely someone in the movie could have been more amazed at what was happening.

The tagline for the film is: “Life isn’t measured in minutes, but in moments.” And I think that describes the film precisely: A collection of moments, some of which are actually interesting. But they do not add up to a collective whole that is anything to write home about.

One such interesting moment is a sequence in which Benjamin narrates the interesting web of activity that leads up to a certain tragedy involving a taxi. What if any one of the things in the web had not happened, Benjamin posits. Like the clock-maker flashback at the beginning, this section of the film is captivating in itself. What it does not seem to do is contribute to the film. Why this sudden change in mode of storytelling? The film would have told the same story without it, and the import of the narration at this point does not really affect any other portion of the story. A whole movie on that subject could have been interesting, but it lasts barely a minute here.

The film also includes one of my pet peeves: The flashback as a plot framing device. Even when used well, this method of laying out the story never feels as satisfying to me, in part because it gives away certain things by its very nature, such as the fact that we know the people we see in the present will survive whatever story in their past we are about to watch.

The choice to tell this story through flashbacks is utterly worthless. As Daisy’s daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) sits with her in the hospital, Caroline reads from Benjamin’s diary and we are led into the story. But this framing device adds nothing to the story, and the story adds nothing to the framing device. And the fact that Hurricane Katrina is brewing outside the hospital is equally superfluous despite its contribution to the final shot of the film.

Now, none of this is to say that the film’s individual elements are less than superb. Brad Pitt (Snatch) amply demonstrates that he has grown up as an actor and can handle something more significant than the cocky punks he plays pretty well. Buried in some of the best “old” make-up I’ve seen in a long time, Pitt carefully crafts his facial expressions, his walk, his body language to reflect the decay Benjamin’s body is in. He delivers his role with judicious restraint.

Cate Blanchett (The Aviator) looks positively radiant here, bringing to life a woman who seems almost intoxicated with ballet, the night air, and men. She is both graceful and passionately absorbed with the things she loves, and Blanchett obviously trained well for the ballet sequences as she delivers dance moves that are stunning. Unfortunately, in scenes where she plays a much older Daisy in the hospital, she is so wheezy and mumbling that I missed half of what she said.

Also unfortunate is the fact that despite quality performances, the characters are simply not endearing. Benjamin reminds me somewhat of Pitt’s turn as Joe Black: Curious to learn about life, but generally monochromatic emotions. Daisy apparently has some depth to her, but insights into why she seems to have some angst in her past are never revealed.

The same is true for the entire cast, really. I was convinced by everyone’s performance, but compelled by none of them – a fault which lies more with the script than the talent pool. The most alluring is Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading) whose very bearing is irresistible; but as the script requires her to cheat on her husband, I couldn’t really fall for her much.

The film’s production design successfully immerses us in the times and places that Benjamin travels. From Louisiana of the 1930's to a hotel in Murmansk in the 1940's and on up to the present, Donald Graham Burt and his artistic crew create a wonderful atmosphere that is ably captured by cinematographer Claudio Miranda. The images are often truly beautiful.

Overall, it is not at all a bad movie; and odds are that if you like character-based dramas, you will glean some enjoyment out of it. But in the end, it’s just another story. A story that pretends to be important and innovative, but which is little more than the gimmick of Benjamin’s age pasted on to some age-old and very obvious lessons about the human condition.

In other words, the film is not much of a curiosity at all.

My Score: 7