‘Seven’ and ‘Fight Club’ director David Fincher switches gears with Brad Pitt in the passenger seat to tackle F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1921 short story about a man who ages backwards. Impeccably detailed, technically brilliant and lavished with devotion from a notoriously finicky director, this epic film is easy to admire but maybe not as affecting as you want it to be.
The Oscar-winning special f/x and make-up are certainly a sight to behold and is one of the rare instances in Hollywood where millions of dollars of CGI actually complements the story rather than distracting – of course, if the f/x didn’t’ work then the film wouldn’t work as their completely tied together to tell this wholly unique story.
I’m curious if all these amazing special f/x, brilliant as they are, didn’t lead to my slight detachment from the characters and the story. My eyes were certainly fooled but I always seemed to be at a distance from the story as if I were watching it through a window on the far side of the room. It might have also been tone but it does beg the question that as special f/x becomes less and less susceptible to the eye, will our brains and hearts follow?
And despite the rich look, I also question shooting digital rather than film; there is an inherent cold vs. warm aesthetic to the two approaches and it could be argued that if Fincher shot on film, the pic might have been more emotionally accessible?
‘Benjamin Button’ most calls to mind ‘Forrest Gump’ with its epic history-spanning, vignette-fueled structure and oblique title character at the center of it all although ‘Button’ is considerably less maudlin and goofy.
Still, no surprise as screenwriter Eric Roth wrote both of them with most details in his Fitzgerald adaptation of his own creation. Taking just the basic conceit of the short story, almost all other details have been dropped including moving the location from a non-descript 1860’s Baltimore to a more atmosphere heavy turn of the century New Orleans.
Typical to this type of film, a completely superfluous framing story is set up in a contemp hospital room where the dying Daisy (Cate Blanchett buried in heavy make-up) has her grown-up daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) read to her from the diary of her friend Benjamin Button – this framing device scores a few more mawkish points for be played out against a budding hurricane – hmm, what hurricane could it be?
Benjamin is born and quickly abandoned on the steps of a nursing home where a black attendant Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) kindly takes him in and raises him as her own. The perfect place to call home for a poor soul that ages backwards, a young, bald Benjamin Button with hard of hearing and a wheelchair fits right in with the other occupants but looks on helplessly to an outside world he’s not quite ready to join.
Despite looking 75, he looks at the world through 12-year old eyes, afflicted with cataracts though they may be, and finds a childish sanctity in the granddaughter of a resident. Sneaking out of bed with a cane, he meets up with Daisy in a fort set up downstairs and so starts a life-long romance. Daisy is Benjamin Button’s Jenny but with a reciprocated passion. Yet Daisy will zip in and out of Benjamin’s life for a few more years.
As Benjamin gets older, he starts to venture out, and eventually proceeds through the trials of manhood with the help of an African pygmy (Rampai Mohadi) who introduces him to the pleasures of sex at a local bordello and a rough-and-rowdy tugboat captain Mike (Jared Harris), who takes Benjamin under his wing and out to sea.
Interludes here include his first taste of grown-up passion with an affair with sophisticate Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton) in Murmansk and an exciting war-time sequence that pits the tugboat against a Nazi U-boat. It’s an expertly staged if somewhat perplexing scene. Years pass, the war ends and Benjamin Button arrives back in New Orleans to start another journey in his life.
Meeting Daisy again, she is now an enchanting young woman with dreams of being a dancer and she becomes immediately smitten with Benjamin. However, she comes on too strong and Benjamin rebukes her sexual advances (wanting a more sensual experience no doubt), an action that will cost him years of trying to make up for it.
His real father (Jason Flemyng) appeared back into Benjamin’s life (although unbeknownst to him) before Benjamin left for the sea and now that he died, Benjamin finds out the truth along with receiving his father’s estate and button factory and with all financial matters taken care of, he follows Daisy to New York, watches her perform ballet, and then later to Paris, only to be met with continued rejection from the stubborn gal.
The apex of the film, of course, rests on exactly how and when Benjamin and Daisy get together, and it comes at no surprise that they consummate their long-standing relationship as they both approach their late-thirties – a physical and emotional crossing road that makes the inevitably of their relationship all the more melancholic.
From here, the film settles down into an almost quiet, domestic acceptance – their blissfully happy for now but both know what lay ahead.
Despite my misgivings about the intangible ‘coldness’ of the film, there’s no denying that Fincher, Pitt, Blanchett and a team of creative artists all collaborated to make a thoroughly detailed piece of work.
Everybody is at the top of their game with Pitt lending a gentle understanding to his role, Blanchett getting most of the heavy lifting with moodiness, passion, anger and insecurities driving her throughout and outstanding supporting work from Harris, Swinton and Mohadi.
A nice treat is that Fincher allowed my favorite label Criterion to license the film from Paramount and par for Criterion, delivers a fantastic Blu-ray package. The film is presented in it’s original theatrical 2.40:1 aspect ratio with a stellar 1080p AVC encode that looks simply jaw-dropping in high-def.
One of the pros of shooting digital is the eventual home release as the resulting encode is pulled directly from the source. Detail and depth is demo-worthy and the DTS HD Master Audio track keeps up with the flawless video.
The film is mostly dialogue driven but the war sequence pounds and the film is full of ambiance that is presented expertly. I don’t see how the video and audio could get any better.
The 2-disc set starts off with a commentary from David Fincher on disc 1. Engaging but a bit dry, Fincher mostly fills his track with tech talk but he rarely allows a minute to go by without some sort of tidbit to offer. The bulk of the special features are the massive string of featurettes all bundled into a play-all feature called ‘The Curious Birth of Benjamin Button’. Collectively running a whopping three hours, these featurettes cover all aspects of the film from pre-production to the premiere.
Appropriately separated into ‘Trimesters’, the ‘First Trimester’ covers the development of ‘Benjamin Button’ and traces the project all the way back to the late 80s. Detailing other filmmaker and actor involvements including Steven Spielberg, this is an extremely fascinating look into how long it takes sometimes for a project to completely come together. We also get ‘Tech Scouts’ here that details specific location shots and ‘Storyboard’ and ‘Art Direction’ galleries (that are not included during play all).
The ‘Second Trimester’ falls on the actual production of the film and looks at Fincher’s directing process and the everyday production aspects. There is a wealth of info here that also includes a short featurette on ‘Costume Design’ and a ‘Costume Gallery’ that are not included in play-all.
The ‘Third Trimester’ is where the magic happens and covers all the post-production aspects that include ‘Performance Capturing’, ‘Benjamin’, ‘Youthenization’, ‘The Chelsea’ and ‘Simulated World’. Diving into every f/x technique employed in the film, this is a wonderful curtain to pull back to expose the wizard.
Although for those that wish to keep the reveals of the magic tricks secret, it would be best to skip this part as you may not watch the film in the same way again. This section also covers the ‘Sound Design’ and ‘Desplat’s Instrumentation’ which shows Fincher sitting down with composer Alexandre Desplat.
The final portion is ‘Birth’ and looks at the ‘Premiere’ as well as showing some ‘Production Stills’. Also included are ‘Trailers’ and insert essay by film critic Kent Jones. All in all, there’s nothing flashy here like a Picture-in-Picture but just good old fashioned, exhaustive information.
Reactions to the film are highly subjective as I appreciated the craft and work of the film more than I really emotionally connected. That being said, I can’t look at this film as anything other than a success for not delving too much into the sappiness that could have crippled this film for a lot of us but would have probably led it to a more commercial success.
For my money, though, the Criterion package makes this a must-own with flawless high-def visuals and audio and wonderfully comprehensive supplements.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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