Copyright 2008, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. PicturesCurious case, indeed. Of all the people to make a film that is easily connected with 1994's Forrest Gump, David Fincher, he of Se7en, Fight Club, and Zodiac, is not the first person who comes to mind. I wonder if the major leap made by the special effects and the manner of style that could be flaunted in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that drew Fincher to the story, or something about his mortality, but here we are with Fincher's latest, but not his best.
Benjamin Button is a very good film that wants to be great, and comes very close. Though the film is a love story in an epic form, the emotions never fully cross over to the audience. Nothing feels wrong, but there is a distance between us and the characters on screen, partly because of how the magical realism of the concept is frequently the driving force of the story. We know that Brad Pitt will soon throw off the old-age makeup, and give it over to Cate Blanchett; how will we get there?
The story, taken loosely from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, involves the strange birth of a boy on Armistice Day, the end of World War I, which appears to coincide with the creation of a clock that goes backwards. The boy is born in the body of a baby with the form of an elderly man; as each day passes, his body grows younger. His father, Thomas (Jason Flemyng), is initially revolted by his son's visage and leaves him on the back step of a retirement home in New Orleans run by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a kind-hearted woman who takes the boy in and names him Benjamin, looking past his peculiarity.
As Benjamin grows up, he meets Daisy, a little girl who visits the retirement home, and their blossoming romance pulls the story forward. Time passes through World War II, the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, as Benjamin and Daisy grow closer, then further apart, as one grows younger and the other grows older.
Benjamin's life is recounted in a diary being read by Daisy's daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond, doing the best in a thankless and pointless role). Caroline reads to her dying mother in a hospital on the eve of Hurricane Katrina, which is essentially used here to tie together the idea of time passing no matter what happens. Unfortunately, this story works just as well without Julia Ormond and Cate Blanchett in scads of old-age makeup (it's impressive makeup, yes, but it's also unnecessary). It's a testament to the story's power that whenever we cut back to the hospital scenes, the film stops in its tracks.
Moreover, Pitt's performance, or Fincher's direction of said performance, or writer Eric Roth's characterization of Button, is strangely childlike and impassive. Benjamin has one major, truly life-altering choice with about 40 minutes left in the film, and Pitt's face is a blank slate, the same blank slate throughout the film. Maybe it's that the script is meant to make us feel little about the title character, but so it is. Roth's used the bare bones of Fitzgerald's story to construct a look, mostly, at the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, though some action does occur elsewhere. In that way, it's a companion piece to another of his works, Gump. Like that film's title character, Benjamin goes many places, has a generation-spanning love interest, and has a simple if positive outlook on life. The final montage of this film, though the most touching and evocative moment, wouldn't have been out of place with Tom Hanks as narrator instead of Pitt.
Why this film is garnering so much Oscar praise is clear; it's an epic, it's got beautiful actors, it's beautifully directed, it's a love story, it's about the 20th century, and on and on. For all the hoopla, this is a good film, not a great one.
Three stars out of four
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