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Dancing_P [ 6.5 ]
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Eric Roth returns to the well and brings back a little too much in this adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story (with liberal doses of Roth's own Forrest Gump script). Just like Winston Groom's satire was de-fanged by Roth, Fitzgerald's story has been turned into a three-hanky epic. David Ficher prevents it from becoming a total mawk-fest; just be glad it wasn't Ron Howard.
Brad Pitt is the titular Button, born a baby in an old man's body. Button ages backwards, so his mind and his body are always at parallel opposites. Adopted by a poor black nurse (Taraji P. Henson), he grows up in an old folks' home where he sees all his friends die as he gets younger. He meets a young girl then and falls in love with her; she grows up to be Cate Blanchett and he becomes Brad Pitt (which is convenient) but they don't get together for a while because he's busy living through major events of the 20th century.
It doesn't so much feel familiar as it does feel prematurely classic - I felt I was rewatching something on my first viewing. Fincher is as always a near-brilliant visual stylist, flowing through the three hours of material with razor-sharp precision. It's a little overlong and a little too self-consciously 'old school', as it is already accepted its place as a classic but a reat deal of it, from the performances to the special effects ad some truly great setpieces, is actually terrific. It just seems a little too sure of itself, a little too convinced.
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chapter11 [ 4.5 ]
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(I feel like the title is unnecessarily truncated in the Oofnet database, but then again maybe that's just me being a dick. In any event, no use drudging up a duplicate listing.)
I find myself firmly in jeff_v's camp on this one. Once again, I feel the need to reiterate that I don't need a busy plot or kinetic action to truly enjoy a film - but I do need to _care_, and when I don't, I find myself in situations like this one, where I simply want to level the "boring" criticism against a flick and fear some sort of "stick to Michael Bay movies, fuckstick!" backlash. "Benjamin Button" has a keen visual sense - the effects and make-up, of course, are miraculous, and David Fincher's impeccable sense of time and place (exercised to maximum effect in "Zodiac") serves him well here - but it's not enough to keep up with the pace. It's like "Forrest Gump" if the titular character were a drab cypher approximating human behavior; like a biopic of Mitt Romney, it asks me to give a shit about characters with no inherent give-a-shit-about-able qualities. He's an elderly baby, and I don't give a shit; he's an old-ass toddler, and I still don't give a shit. The whole enterprise just smacks of prestige-movie Oscar-bait, and it never capitalizes on the inherent weirdness of its story. I like breathtaking scenery and sepia-toned nostalgia as much as the next dude, but it doesn't substitute for story, or acting, or anything that makes cinema such an inherently exciting and compelling pursuit. It's just... there. And it's there for like three fuckin' hours.
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DokBrowne [ 9.5 ]
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All the things jeff_v accused it of being, were my initial worries going in. As much as I've been anticipating it, there was the growing fear that it would be too static, Pitt a blank slate, he's better in flamboyant modes, a superficial exercise in technical wizardry. But I was quietly devastated by the movie in the end. I'm tempted to say that the movie merely presents a mood of existential melancholy and that suffices for a reaction from the audience, rather than actually dealing with specific themes, especially since Pitt's reverse aging is only intermittenly addressed in the dialogue, and indeed he remains more of a vessel for contemplation than a living, breathing human being.
But ultimately I think that adds to the poignancy. His circumstances are plenty strange enough; to make him in any way eccentric or even more outspoken would be redundant. He's cursed with an affliction that forces his constant awareness of the fragility and ephemeral aspects of life, which logically turns him into more of an observer than a doer. Brad Pitt's performance is modulated appropriately, and as others have keenly noted, his movie star fame adds to the iconographic symbolism of seeing Benjamin Button at the different stages of life.
It's a powerful film, for the very least because it induces musings about how we live, for what reasons, what's important, how we cope with inevitability, and the effects of the choices we make. Even if it didn't have ideas of its own, it succeeds by stirring such contemplation. It's like the movie equivalent of seeing something beautiful and the long pause that ensues as you suddenly notice how absurd and wonderful and difficult and ultimately heartbreaking your time is on earth.
David Fincher not only crafts the fuck out of nearly every shot, offering 3 hours of endless visual riches (and knowing shrewdly how to blend tone and emotion with color, lighting, and who knows how many other compositional details), but also, with the memory of "Fight Club" and "Zodiac" still lingering, displays an exciting Kubrickian ambition for pushing the boundaries of cinematic language through technical sorcery. However he made Pitt and Blanchett appear during their radically different stages of life without any seams whatsoever (other than the sheer blinding glow of Blanchett's photoshopped face in her earlier scenes), it's an astounding effect, and merely one of innumerable examples. You know you're in the company of a special filmmaker when no matter how good or bad their film is, you can rely on him to show it to you with techniques never before mastered and only rarely attempted, with a magical post-modern genius.
Rest assured though, the style complements the subject matter. The "Forrest Gump" echoes in the script are perfectly smoothed away by Fincher's dark, brooding, whimsical yet deeply mournful approach. Even the happy scenes are touched with sorrow, longing, and fear of what's to come. The best moment in the film may be when (spoilers) Pitt and Blanchett finally come together, and in a montage enjoy the newborn happiness of a relationship as they build the interior of a small home together. Even as they try to establish a lasting relationship and we see countless familiar signifiers of beginner's-love bliss, the circumstances of Button's life put the scene in a tragic context - however wonderful it feels, it won't last, it's just a moment, and how we deal with that day after day?
I dunno, maybe I can't make a strong enough case for the movie, but I think it's elements are all precisely in place, majestically composed and wondrous to behold, and it took a profound toll on my thoughts. Fincher has made *another* masterpiece, I'm not hesitant to say. It's a movie I look forward to losing myself in time and again
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jeff_v [ 5.0 ]
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Plodding, inert adaption of Fitzgerald's short story finds Brad Pitt aging in reverse through special effects wizardry (the effects and make-up are the high-points), but never becoming an interesting character. Pitt is good when he can be a nut or a strutting cock-of-the-walk; he's dull when asked to be serious. See Synechdoche, New York for a less facile examination of coming to terms with death.
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.9 |
| No. Ratings | : 8 | |
| No. Reviews | : 4 | |
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