FILM REVIEW: THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

Benjamin (Brad Pitt) and Daisy (Cate Blanchett) finally converge in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.


The Age of Descent

By John Esther

Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920s short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button chronicles, or de-chronicles, the life and, barely, the times of the titular character, a male who was born in his eighties and grew younger -- so young he disappeared into his mother’s womb before becoming spermatozoa.

Okay I wish director David Fincher (Fight Club; Panic Room; Zodiac) would have had the artistic sensitivity to take the narrative that far -- not even close. After a 20th century lifetime, Benjamin vanishes with about as much trace as Fincher gives to the grand events Benjamin lived. No womb and little war.

Abandoned by his father, Thomas (Jason Flemyng), at a home for the elderly the day Benjamin is born and his mother dies, Benjamin (Brad Pitt) starts out an old man. Not expected to live very long, his loving Hollywood-stereotype-of-those-times mammy (Taraji P. Henson) cares after him along with several old people in the home.
As Benjamin grows younger with time, he quickly becomes accustomed to the passing of lives around him. People are on their way out. Benjamin is on his way back. It is the ultimate life for youth without childlike innocence (unless you are in Iraq or Palestine where children are all too familiar with death from an early age).

Unfortunately, as Benjamin grows younger, the film becomes more infantile. Absconding what little there is of Fitzgerald’s commentary and social behavior in the short story, Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth glide by the times.

Benjamin may have lived through World War II, Vietnam, both JFK and RFK assassinations, the Civil Rights movement and other turbulent events, but, with the exception of Benjamin’s shipping days during WWII -- which are more about manly adventure than inhumanity commentary -- we get a political/historical vacuum.

Filling the void, the movie, in middlebrow style, pits Benjamin against an array of women. Although there must have been many for a guy who is as handsome as Brad Pitt, none really stand out for Benjamin except Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton) and the love of his life, Daisy (Cate Blanchett). Elizabeth and Daisy are the minor and major love stories of Benjamin and the film, respectively. While they are touching at moments, the longing, loving and departing in this 159-minute film eventually wears out its welcome.

Moreover as the film plays out the trope of the eventual passing of a older man/younger woman to a older woman/younger man to its forlorn conclusion, Roth, the screenwriter behind such soft headed endeavors as Forrest Gump, The Postman, The Horse Whisperer and Ali, offers up enough banal platitudes (“I was thinking how nothing lasts, and what a shame that is”; "You can't see what's coming after ya"; “It is what it is”) you may wish for the day you were never born.
Perhaps because the film was so politically vapid, Pitt, a semi-socially conscious guy, who has put his time, money and mouth into the reconstruction of New Orleans post-Katrina, there is another, rather tedious, layer to the story where a daughter (Julia Ormond) reads her dying mother Benjamin’s tale as Hurricane Katrina ventures forth. (This season is filled with storytelling-referential films: Australia, The Tales of Despereaux, Dragon Hunters, Slumdog Millionaire, etc.)
The Katrina catch is too little too late. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button wants to make some Kubrickian comment a la Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, about the human condition vis-à-vis time and, to a lesser degree, space, but Fincher and the company mentality are not up for the task.

For what it is worth, and I will get to that in a moment, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a shockingly tame story in these wild times. As much of the country, including many in New Orleans, moves forward in the hopes of a new political narrative, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a process of technical wonder and aimless wander through the life and times of one particular man. While it may have had its own bourgeois conceits. Gasper Noe’s Irreversible had more to say about time and motion in the age of descent than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (ontological, violent or otherwise). At least the memorable Irreversible provoked something substantial in the viewer.
However, the one thing this film has going for it is the acting. No, not the typically excellent Blanchett, surprisingly, who is woefully miscast and doubled up in some dancing scenes, nor any of the other female roles in the film (has Fincher ever summoned a good role or performance out of a female actor?), but from Pitt, Flemyng and a few other male roles in the film.

In particular, Pitt manages to sedate himself and portray his character with impressive skill (unlike his main squeeze in Changeling, who almost wrecks the film with her performance). The result is a career-making performance that should pique the curiosity of more skilled directors in the years to come and go.