STARRING: Brad Pitt, Cate
Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Taraji P. Henson, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas, Julia
Ormond
2008, 167 Minutes, Directed by:
David Fincher
If
nothing else, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button demonstrates David
Fincher's flexibility as a director . . .
With a resume consisting
largely of nihilistic thrillers such as Alien
3 and the savage iconoclasm of Fight Club, his foray into whimsical
fantasy attains a sense of gentleness which we haven't seen from him before. His
earthen palate of yellows and browns becomes warmer here: full of darkened rooms
and pools of light that serve to comfort rather than unsettle. Another director
would have sunk this project with an excess of sentiment, but this one knows how
to tinge the sweet with the bitter, and respects subtlety enough to let his
audience find their own way.
Unfortunately, while it may
broaden Fincher's range, it has very little to say in and of itself. Adapted
from a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Benjamin Button posits a man aging
in reverse as means to discuss Very Big Things like life and death, the
transience of happiness, and the value of love. It works - kind of - but it
takes its sweet time in getting there and leaves little behind truly worthy of
remembrance.
The title figure (Brad Pitt) straddles the history of the 20th
Century, conceived at the precise moment in which a gifted clock-maker sets his
masterpiece in motion only to find the hands running backwards. As an infant, he
is gray-haired and wrinkled: afflicted with the myriad physical calamities of
old age and not expected to live more than a few weeks. He's abandoned on the
doorstep of a retirement home by his horrified father (Jason Flemyng) and raised
by the loving Queenie (Taraji P. Hanson) who considers him a living miracle.
Surrounded by death each day, he slowly sheds his palsied tremors, suggesting
that something extraordinary may be in store for him.
"Benjamin Button doles out life lessons of the Forrest Gump
variety . . ."
It isn't and that's kind of the
point. His one true love appears as a little girl named Daisy, growing older
(into a luminous Cate Blanchett) while Benjamin races to meet her from the other
end of life's path. He finds work on a tugboat which trawls the port of New
Orleans before setting sail for northern Russia and the bloodshed of WWII. He
returns home to reconcile with his dying father, inherit a vast button-making
fortune, and court Daisy fitfully yet faithfully as the decades melt away. But
beyond his physical transformation, his life feels extremely typical: goosed
along by a few bits of deus ex machina disguised as capricious fate, but
otherwise touching upon the same tropes as countless other fictional
protagonists.
More to the point, the scale of
Benjamin Button implies a grandiosity which simply doesn't exist, and
while Pitt's performance is admirable, it fails to illuminate any distinction in
the character. Benjamin is quiet, thoughtful, and reflective, possessing life
lessons of the Forrest Gump variety which he doles out in a suitably colorful
Louisiana twang. The figures he meets on his travels are equally colorful - from
the tugboat captain who hires him (Jared Harris), to the wife of a spy with whom
he engages in a discreet affair (Tilda Swinton) - but their eccentricities bleed
into contrivance after awhile, and Benjamin himself eventually shares that fate.
We learn precious little about
his thought processes during the later stages of his life - the "best of both
worlds" part when the vigor of youth is combined with the wisdom of experience -
and while he remains acutely aware of his condition, he delivers no insight into
the loneliness that comes with it. It exists simply to provide the right mixture
of pathos and longing, packaged in an intriguing form to establish him as
suitably "different."
And Benjamin Button
takes far, far too long to tell his story. Caught up the fairy dust, Fincher
draws each episode out like a razor blade, extending the running time to tickle
three hours. The gorgeous art direction and nuanced performances help, but they
can only go so far before ennui sets in. An awkward framing device does little
to help matters, despite a good turn from Julia Ormond as Daisy's now-grown
daughter. When it finally reaches its apex, the response is a collective shrug:
not uninterested, but puzzled at why such labor has produced such merely
adequate results.
Restlessness dogs Benjamin
Button from first frame to last, never shed despite all its assurances that
it subject is really, truly special. It doesn't hurt going down, but it leaves
you wondering what the hell the point of it all was. Hopefully, our own journeys
through life won't end on quite such a note.
If
nothing else, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button demonstrates David
Fincher's flexibility as a director . . .