Filed under: Drama
The most reoccurring critique of Benjamin Button has nothing to do with it as a film. Certain mainstream critics base their opinions not on the nearly three-hour film, but on the singular premise on which the entire epic is constructed around. The leads to my first maxim: In order for this film to work, the watcher needs to completely accept its fantastical device as reality. Unlike its source material, this universe within which completely human characters interact, the “unusual circumstances” with which Button lives are never farcical. They are sympathetic, tragic, and ultimately used as a device to make him a far more humanized character than anyone else in the story. Of course to truly feel for this character, one must essentially suspend a basic axiom of reality.
Once one abandons the concept that as a body lives, it ages, it decays, and it is gradually destroyed by its surroundings, can the whole concept of linear cause and effect still exist within the new reality that screenwriter Eric Roth has constructed? Case in point: there is a rather lengthy montage in the film, in which the tragedy of cause and effect is (over) dramatized. Are people watching supposed to swallow that Benjamin is a completely self-contained anomaly and that all of his surroundings still have to play by normal rules? The inevitability of a car accident based on a purely deterministic concept of the universe would be perfectly fitting in any movie that takes place within a reality with which a viewer can maintain a fundamental empathy. Unfortunately, this movie has traded the luxury of empathy for its main character’s “unusual circumstances.”
Even if Benjamin Button doesn’t work holistically, it’s still undeniably brimming with noteworthy performances. In fact, Blanchett gives one of her best performances since 2006’s Babel. Brad Pitt gives a believable performance too, but as the movie progresses it becomes increasingly apparent that he is as always, essentially a physical actor. When he needs to convincingly inhabit a body completely unlike his own impressive physique, he is quite simply mesmerizing. Just like Twelve Monkeys and Fight Club, he is fantastic at moving across the screen completely convincingly. Unfortunately, Pitt’s control over his facial expressions is far less consistent. In this movie he is playing the loneliest man in the world. He theoretically has the ability to empathize and understand everyone around him, yet he knows that none of them will ever be able to relate to him. He represents this terrible burden with a tremendous amount of on-screen apathy. The only real doubt he expresses seems contained within the script. His character’s supposed rampant self-doubt just doesn’t come through in the performance.
I read the Fitzgerald’s original novella sometime last year, and was completely taken by how simply it subscribed to telling this man’s story. It is a narrative, and it both starts and ends vaguely. One of my favorite moments is when Benjamin, a once decorated soldier of the Spanish-American War attempting to re-enlist to fight in WWI. He arrives at a recruitment station wearing all of his past decorations, but now with the appearance of a pre-pubescent boy. He runs home crying after he is laughed away from the station. It is simple moments like this that run too few in the movie. A man who ages backwards: any screenwriter would be bursting with a plethora of fantastic, funny, tragic, and playfully entertaining vignettes in which the day-to-day difficulties of such a man could be explored. Instead, the movie is littered with interactions that could exist within any other movie. I was constantly wondering why a character with as much potential to bring something truly original to the screen was being so consistently wasted on very well done, but nonetheless very ordinary scenarios.
At nearly three hours, Benjamin Button is easily the longest mainstream movie of the year. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with a movie being objectively “long.” The problem only crops up when it feels long. With the material that he had, Fincher was perfectly justified in making a movie as long as he did. The problem here was in how much time was spent on each part of Benjamin’s life. The first half was very deliberately paced, and even his middle age seemed deliberately whirlwind as to represent the only truly happy period for him. It was oddly apparent that the end of this character’s life seemed so rushed. The entire movie had been Benjamin and Daisy worrying about this period of his life, and then when it actually came, it felt all too glazed over.
My lasting contemplation over Benjamin Button is over an artistic choice of either Roth or Fincher. Fitzgerald’s original novel is crafted with a Scarlett Letter like parallelism where the first half of the book is comprised of scenes that each have a parallel scene in its latter half. Instead of this, the film represents Benjamin’s growth less predictably. This feels most glorious when as an old man he leaves to see the world; unlike every other man to ever live, he is blessed with his physical pique at a time during which he can draw on the cumulative knowledge of an entire life. Soon after though, a child with dementia takes the place of a traditionally aged man with Alzheimer’s. I can’t decide if this is an improvement on the book, but I have a hard time criticizing this. At the very least, these auters have kept me thinking long after the credits rolled.
My lasting impression of Benjamin Button was not one of satisfaction. I walked out of the theater wholly unsettled by the movie I had just seen. I wasn’t sad for the characters or the tragedy that unfolded before me on-screen, I was mourning the lack of direction took on such a promising concept. Now as I muse over the movie, I can accept that what Roth and Fincher did certainly did have direction. The fact that I personally disagree with their artistic decisions is a minor issue. The real issue is that Benjamin Button is an unsatisfying movie that leaves viewers both confused and quite appropriately, still curious.
-Paul Brinnel
1 Comment so far
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I liked your thoughts here I would be interested to hear your critique of Synecdoche New York.
Comment by Chris
02.16.09 @ 1:06 am
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