The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Riddled cliches

Kyle Taylor, ,  The Jakarta Post, ,  Jakarta   |  Sun, 02/22/2009 11:48 AM  |  Screen

There is a scene in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button where Cate Blanchett's character looks at Brad Pitt and says, "You're perfect."

The irony is overwhelming. And while this film looks great, it is thoroughly underwhelming.

Director David Fincher, who is best-known for dark, stylish films like Zodiac, Fight Club, and Se7en, seems out of his comfort zone here. While Benjamin Button is extraordinarily cinematic - richly visual, impressive CGI - it doesn't deliver.

Actors Tariji P. Henson (left) and Brad Pitt are shown in a scene from director David Fincher’s film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. (Courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

The plot involves Pitt as Benjamin Button, who is born on Armistice Day 1918 in New Orleans, aged 86. Button then ages backward for the rest of his life. The title and premise of the movie come from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but little else is kept from the text. The director manages to turn what was a comic short story into an epic and dull film, which runs just shy of three hours.

The story is told as a series of flashbacks from the present day, where Blanchett lies on her deathbed in a hospital as her adult daughter reads to her Button's postcards and diary. The setup is almost like Tim Burton's Big Fish. But that film managed to balance an unusual story with laughs and quiet wisdom. This film does not. The serious moments come across as dull and the whimsical ones feel twee.

The plot is episodic, here Button growing up in a retirement home, there caught up in World War II. Skipping through the years makes it difficult to understand why the characters are motivated to make the decisions they do.

Brad Pitt is shown in a scene from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. (Courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

The film does not really commit to dealing with the reverse-age process other than what it looks like and how it affects the Pitt-Blanchett romance, and as a result feels gimmicky. Other than his unique condition, Pitt's character is remarkably uninteresting, and it is hard to care about him or Blanchett's character, and even more difficult to understand why they love each other. As such, the doomed romanticism wears a little thin.

You could easily be forgiven for thinking you have seen this film before. That's because writer Eric Roth, who was responsible for Forrest Gump, uses the exact same template.

Begin with an American man from the South with an unusual disability which offers him unique insight into life and its mysteries. Have him embark upon an epic journey and meet larger-than-life characters. Have him take part in plenty of short adventures that act as compacted versions of the historical events and reflect the popular culture of the time you are depicting. Throw in a countercultural, slightly cruel love interest and there you have it - Gump 2.

The only intrigue comes from watching Pitt as a small Gollum-like old man-boy transform into an even younger version of his present self, as close as CGI can make him look like he did in Thelma & Louise.

Aside from the technology, Pitt does well with the role physically - capturing the mannerisms and movements of children perfectly. But emotionally Pitt appears blank.

There is a minor character in the film who tells Benjamin Button how he has been struck by lightning seven times in his life, variously recounting each time at different moments throughout the story. The camera cuts to old-reel depictions to hilarious effect, like a cruel hint at how the rest of the film could have been handled.

It is especially hard not to wonder what might have been, given that Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman were variously reported to be attached to the project to direct and write the screenplay respectively. With their commitment to making the absurd work, the result could have been much more interesting.

It is supposed to be a meditation on life and death, the inescapable clutches of time and dealing with abandonment, but it offers no new perspective. The ending of the film is riddled with clich* and is almost insulting. It seems somewhat hypocritical for a film of almost three hours to deliver a message of living life to the fullest and seizing the day.

Perhaps, there will come a time when studios hand over the US$150 million for a few Oscars (Benjamin Button is nominated for 13) and skip the film part entirely.

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