THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
WARNER BROS.
RELEASED 6 February 2009
Based on a 1921 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), this screenplay has been floating around Hollywood for over a decade and finally settled in the hands of the very capable director David Fincher (Zodiac, Fight Club).
The whole movie is based around a simple concept. Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), born in 1918, is ageing in reverse. So as he gets older, he looks younger. So to start with, he looks like an old man trapped in a baby’s body. The effect is so unsettling that his wealthy father abandons him on the doorstep of a nearby elderly care home. His new foster parents raise Benjamin like any other child, even though he acts like a child as his body grows into that of an old man. Striking up a friendship with a local girl called Daisy (who grows up to be played by Cate Blanchett), Benjamin’s body becomes stronger until he decides to take to the waves as a fisherman. Years out in Russia see him spend long nights drinking vodka with English Channel swimmer and socialite Elizabeth Abbot (Tilda Swinton), and when he finally returns to the US, he finds Daisy is a successful ballerina who he realises is the love of his life. But while she is growing older, he is looking younger every day.
This romantic fantasy obviously makes no logical sense, but if you take it on it’s own terms, I think you’ll find it incredibly enjoyable. It’s Fincher’s most mainstream movie so far, but it still involves an unsual story alongside extremely complicated and faultless special effects. The ageing effects work on Brad Pitt is ingenious. Some of his performance was captured in the same manner as that of Gollum in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies, where Brad’s acting was captured in the computer so his face and body could be recreated and aged forty years. Cate Blanchett also gets made to look younger and older, and it never fails to convince. Both actors are superb, with Pitt just choosing better and better roles, while Blanchett makes acting look easy, yet again.
The film is nearly three hours long but has so much incident and visual wealth to behold that it feels like a two-hour movie at most. It reminded me a little bit of ‘A Very Long Engagement’, invoking the same time periods and sepia-washed look. The cinematography throughout is sumptuous.
The script comes courtesy of Eric Roth (an Oscar winner with ‘Forrest Gump’), and there are similarities between the two films, mainly because the main character goes on a life-long journey across continents. It’s not the most memorable script, but it suits the realistic nature of the characters in this ‘concept’ movie.
If I had to criticise ‘Benjamin Button’ for anything, I suppose I’d have to ask what is the film trying to say. Being so fantastical, I’m not not sure what moral or philosophical issues it can possibly be questioning. But as a fantasy film, perhaps it doesn’t need to be about anything...
I was totally swept away by ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. The strange story is handled without hesitation, and Benjamin is a hugely sympathetic creation, trapped in a world that he lives to the full but can never quite experience like everybody else.
FOUR OUT OF FIVE