MUBI

Tak terhitung banyaknya novel yang telah dijadikan film, baik itu karya klasik atau kontemporer. Dari Gone With the Wind sampai Twilight, para penulis skrip tampaknya berlomba-lomba memfilmkan novel. Drama juga favorit untuk diangkat ke layar lebar; seluruh drama Shakespeare sudah diadaptasi ke film dan bahkan beberapa di antaranya memiliki beberapa versi pada tahun yang berbeda. Pihak Academy pun memberikan dua kategori penilaian yaitu Best Original Screenplay dan Best Adapted Screenplay.

Cerpen ke Film
Lalu bagaimana dengan adaptasi cerita pendek? Jika dibandingkan dengan novel dan drama, cerpen barangkali kalah favorit untuk diangkat ke layar lebar. Selain ceritanya yang jauh lebih singkat, cerpen juga minim tema, dialog, deskripsi, dan tentu saja, karakterisasi. Akibatnya, interpretasi yang ‘lebih’ dibutuhkan ketika mengadaptasi sebuah cerpen menjadi film yang sukses.

Kita tetap bisa menyaksikan film-film blockbuster seperti Minority Report (2004) arahan Steven Spielberg yang diangkat dari cerpen Phillip Dick; Brokeback Mountain (2006) yang diangkat dari cerpen Annie Proulx; Lust, Caution (2007) yang diadaptasi dari cerpen Eileen Chang. Dua film terakhir berhasil disutradarai dengan baik oleh Ang Lee. Lalu ada juga Million Dollar Baby (2004) yang disutradarai oleh Clint Eastwood dari karya F.X. O’Toole, dan berhasil memenangi banyak penghargaan. Tapi bagaimana caranya film-film yang berdurasi rata-rata dua jam tersebut sukses hanya dengan mengadaptasi sebuah cerpen, yang sebenarnya dapat dibaca dalam sekali duduk?

Film adaptasi cerpen adalah salah satu rahasia besar Hollywood. Film yang diangkat dari cerpen hanya membutuhkan pondasi utama yaitu seluruh cerita itu sendiri. Ia tidak akan disibukkan dengan kegiatan memangkas-mangkas jalan cerita, namun membangunnya dari cerita yang sudah ada.

Tetapi ada juga penulis skenario dan sutradara yang langsung memelintir plot, karakterisasi, dan tone cerpen tersebut sehingga menghasilkan cerita yang sama sekali berbeda. Ada yang berhasil, ada juga yang gagal. Misalnya, film yang sekarang sedang ramai dibicarakan The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Film yang diangkat dari cerpen karya F. Scott Fitzgerald ini ditulis oleh Eric Roth dan disutradarai oleh David Fincher dan berhasil menyabet 13 Nominasi Oscar tahun ini, termasuk kategori Best Pictures, Best Director dan Best Leading Actor (Brad Pitt).

Tidak Menggigit
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (CCBB) versi film sangat berbeda dengan versi cerpen Fitzgerald. Roth, yang juga menulis skrip film fenomenal Forrest Gump (1994), hanya mengadaptasi nama Benjamin Button dan ide cerita tentang hidup yang terbalik—Benjamin lahir dengan fisik seseorang berumur 87 tahun dan seiring bertambah usianya, kondisi fisiknya malah semakin muda (reverse aging). Selebihnya, merupakan imajinasi Roth sendiri.

Namun, kolaborasinya dengan Fincher menurut saya hanya menghasilkan cerita datar selama nyaris tiga jam. Tidak ada eksplorasi karakter; ia juga tidak menyebutkan bagaimana Benjamin bisa lahir seperti itu, atau setidaknya menampilkan konflik masa kecil Benjamin dengan teman-teman sepermainannya, sehingga terasa sensasi keanehannya itu sekaligus memperkuat karakternya ketika tumbuh dewasa. Selain itu, latar cerita juga tidak dieksplorasi dengan dalam. Dan yang kurang masuk akal, perubahan fisik Benjamin tidak pernah diekspos media dan orang-orang terdekatnya.

Baiklah, ide tentang badai katrina dan gaya penceritaan flash back-nya cukup inovatif, tapi tidak ada keterangan apa-apa mengenai kejadian-kejadian ketika Benjamin hidup selain ditulis di dalam diari. Bagaimana kondisi tahun 50an dan 60an ketika Benjamin mengalami transisi hidup yang cukup penting tidak dijelaskan. Mereka hanya menonton Twist and Shout-nya The Beatles, dan saya berkata dalam hati, “Oh, itu tahun 1967..”

Mungkin ada sedikit kisah sentimentil ketika Benjamin menjalin hubungan dengan Daisy. Namun, Fincher sedikit gagal menampilkan konflik kedua karakter itu. Chemistry keduanya juga kurang meyakinkan (saya). Ketika anaknya lahir, Benjamin memutuskan untuk pergi karena tubuhnya yang semakin muda sehingga tidak mungkin menjadi ayah. Keputusan Benjamin inilah yang membuat CCBB jadi terasa datar sekali. Padahal jika ia tetap tinggal dan menjadi ayah, akan banyak sekali konflik yang bisa digarap (sebagai perbandingan, di dalam versi cerpen, Benjamin sampai tua diurus oleh anaknya). Akibatnya, kita hanya disuguhi kehebatan tata rias wajah dengan efek CGI dan close-up muka Brad Pitt sepanjang film. Benjamin sangat membosankan dan nyaris tidak “memberikan” apa apa kepada penonton; ia hanya berjalan mengarungi waktu dan seolah melambaikan tangan kepada kita sambil berkata, _“Hey, I’m 60 now, but look much younger!” _

Situs RottenTomatoes mungkin sempat memberikan positive respons sebanyak 72%, tapi rata-rata pujiannya bukan karena kemampuan akting yang luar biasa. Menurut saya, tampilan visual effect bukanlah segalanya. CCBB gagal menampilkan kepada penonton, bagaimana reverse aging tersebut memberikan pengaruh yang dalam kepada si tokoh utama. Saya juga bukan anti-Brad Pitt. Banyak perannya yang menurut saya worth-Oscar di masa lalu, tapi tidak dilirik oleh Academy. Namun ironisnya, ketika ia tidak memberikan kemampuan akting yang mumpuni dalam CCBB, ia mendapat nominasi sebagai The Best Actor in Leading Role. Tidak nampak keistimewaan seorang Brad Pitt di sana. Kalau begini, tokoh Benjamin sepertinya bisa dimainkan aktor mana pun.

Mengadaptasi cerpen ke dalam film bukanlah pekerjaan gampang. Memang proses pengambilan tema, karakter, atau plot-nya sama seperti di dalam novel, tetapi tetap dibutuhkan kreatifitas dan orisinalitas dari sang penulis skenario dan sutradara untuk membangunnya ke dalam film berdurasi empat kali lipat lebih lama dari membaca versi cerpennya.

Having not seen the Curious Case of Benjaimin Button at the cinema and waiting until now and the dvd release I feel like a slight fraud for being a fan of David Fincher and Brad Pitts previous works the incomparable neo noir Fight Club and the brutal detective thriller Se7en. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is both a huge daprture for David FIncher as a director relying far more in this movie on substance rather than the style of his previous works but also as step in a far maturer direction for both its director and its star. Far more than a contrived attempt at awards and prizes its far more than the su of its parts a splendidly made & constructed film based on a profoundly original premise and one that like Fight Club and Se7en could of faltered in the hands of a more inexperienced and flamboyant director in the Curious Case of Benjamin Button the astounding special effects that take Brad pitt’s Benjamin from a crippled old man at the age of 7 to the ages less more familiar Pitt of Thelma and Louise and his earlier films is a wonder to behold and does’nt seem to overwhelm the story and anrrative itself merely serving to highlight the poignancy of a truly original and at times heart wrenching story particuarly in its final act . It simply tells the story of a man who is old when he is born and an infant when he dies but it is the journey he goes on and the people he meets that truly astounds. All those around him, everyone he knows and loves, grow older in the usual way, and he passes them on the way down. As I watched the film, I became consumed by a conviction that this was simply wrong and began to feel a compassion for not only the character of Bnejamin Button but for the people he would ineveitably lose and for the one person who would lose him in a predicatable and ridiculous but still wrenchingly moving sequence in its final scenes. Its a credit to Fincher that he stayed true to the story and did not malign the emotion of the characters and their relationships in favour or an old man grows young comedic vehicle. It does contain moments that will make you smile, moments of brilliantly underplayed comedy by Pitt in particular as he grows to understand the world being viewed as an old man when in reality he is 20 years old and takes to tasks and his various jobs over the years with the vigour and vitality of a 20 year old in the body of an old man……. it is both funny at times moving and attimes ridiculous but this is all part of the charm of The Curious case Of Benjamin Button.

Let me paraphrase the oldest story I know: In the beginning, there was nothing, and then God said, “Let there be light.” Everything comes after the beginning, and we all seem to share this awareness of the direction of time’s arrow. There is a famous line by e.e. cummings that might seem to apply to Benjamin Button: and down he forgot as up he grew. But no, it involves the process of forgetting our youth as we grow older.

We begin a movie or novel and assume it will tell a story in chronological time and in a certain order it is with some of Hollywoods greatest talents that narrative is successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully thrown out of the window – Christopher Nolan with the memory loss thriller Memento, Quentin Tarantinos Pulp Fiction with its 3 overlapping story arch structure and indeed in Finchers own Fight Club with the ditortion of reality suffered by an insomniac schizophrenic Edward Norton and Brad Pitt being in two places at once but never knwoing they’re there. . Flashbacks and flash-forwards, we understand. If it moves backward through a story (Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal”), its scenes reflect a chronology seen out of order. If a day repeats itself (Harold Ramis’ “Groundhog Day”) and the Gwyneth Paltrow Rom com – drom Sliders, each new day begins with the hero awakening and moving forward. If time is fractured into branching paths (" New York"), it is about how we attempt to control our lives. Even time-travel stories always depend on the inexorable direction of time and its distortions using subtitles or visual gimmicks to let us know as the audience where we are and indeed when we are. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button does this but does it in away that never seems to convolute or over complicate the story or in a way that other films seem fit to treating the audience as the lowest common denominator and simplifying things with obvious cues to the time and place – Subtitles – New York 1969 for example. David Fincher uses culture and visuals that never take away from the story as a whole and in some ways serve the story by defining what generation the characters are in, Button goes through the second world war as a veteran at only 27 years old, he sees the 60’s and the Beatles on televisions as a youth at 47 years old it is this that epitamises the charm of this movie it never takes its audience for granted.

Yes, you say, but Benjamin Button’s story is a fantasy. I realize that. It can invent as much as it pleases. But the film’s admirers speak of how deeply they were touched, what meditations it invoked. I felt instead: Life doesn’t work this way. We are an observer of our passage, and so are others. It has been proposed that one reason people marry is because they desire a witness to their lives. How could we perform that act of love if we were aging in opposite directions? is one question proposed and in some ways answered if something as trivial and superficial as a movie can hold the answers to some of lifes most important questions than Benjamin Button if not nailing the answers certainly does its best effort to ask its audience questions of not only themselves but of life and what we want and take for granted in general. In the film, Benjamin (Brad Pitt) as an older man is enchanted by a younger girl (Cate Blanchett). Later in the film, when he is younger and she is older, they make love. This is presumably meant to be the emotional high point & culmination of the build up of their characters relationship and growing understanding from Blanchetts characters of Buttons desease. It is both moving and a pivotal part of the film thats sets up the emotional third act.

Pitt nominated for best actor and (controversially) may possibly have deserved it because of his heroic struggle in the performance. Yes, he had to undergo much makeup, create body language and perform physically to be manipulated by computers but he portrays the Ages of Man with much skill and I for one as an audience member felt invested in the character and his story and by the end was moved by his plight and sympathised with his character and the characters around him as he sees loved ones die and move on before eventually succumbing tot he inevitable it is in the final sequences that the film makes sense, making light of Benjaimins transition into childhood with all the tantrums and melodrama of any pre pubescant youngster its the fact that he ahs lived such a life full of wonder and magic and experience that makes these scenes not so much funny but heart wrenchingly sad particular when he nolonger remembers Daisy and the women he feel inlove who has aged to an old women reflecting a mirror reverse image of the opening scenes when Benjaimin was introduced to Daisy as an old man and she was a young girl it gives the film an ironic finality and because of the events of everything in between is an incredibally moving sequence.

The film was directed by David Fincher, no stranger to labyrinths (“Zodiac,” “Fight Club”). The screenplay is by Eric Roth, who wrote “Forrest Gump” and reprises the same approach, by having his hero’s condition determine his life experience. To say, however, that Roth “adapted” the original short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald would be putting it mildly. Fitzgerald wrote a comic farce which Roth and Fincher have made a forlorn elegy. Roth’s approach makes Benjamin the size of a baby at birth. Fitzgerald sardonically but consistently goes the other way: The child is born as an old man, and grows smaller and shorter until he is finally a bottle-fed baby. Not much is said about Benjamin’s mother, which is a pity, because he is 5-feet-8 at birth, and I wonder how much pushing that required. The film in my opinion is worthy of being in my top 30 films & was alot more and in some ways not what I was expecting when I sat down to watch another David Fincher/Brad Pitt vehicle substance over style, Story over gimmicks, treating the audience with an obvious respect it plays like a film that I think deserved its hype and indeed Oscar and awards nominations if only for its honesty and warmth…… All in all a magnificent achievment by David Fincher and his cast and one that I think will stand the tests of time in years to come and maybe even age backwards much in the same way as Benjamin Button. *

JAMES HOSKINS © NW& Publishing web review.

I honestly don’t see what all the fuss is about. Pitt and Blanchett give solid performances as always, and the story is undoubtedly touching on some level. Screenwriter Eric Roth obviously had a strong desire to accentuate the extremes of aging to juxtapose children with the elderly as a means of bridging the generation gap. I found the concept of aging backwards intriguing but I’m afraid David Fincher simply didn’t grab my attention with this film. Instead of providing audiences with a taste of what should have been a magical, heartwarming, and mysterious insight into Benjamin Button and his bizarre condition, Fincher concentrates with infuriating persistance on the subjects of love and loss. This film is essentially a bastardized romantic tragedy. At a few times I felt The Curious Case tapped into brilliance, but for the most part it was disappointingly average.

Amazingly, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN manages to be completely devoid of any sort of magical or poetic realism that was sorely missing.

If it sounds like I’m jumping too far into the deep end, you’d be right.
Let me go back a moment.

The short story from which this film was adapted, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is not the great romantic nor epic story the film would like you to believe. In short, it is more like a “youth wasted on the young” parable.

But, in any case, David Fincher has risen to the occasion, perhaps more inspired by the possiblities of simply visually representing a man that is literally aging backwards.

The film tells the story of the tiltular character, Benjamin, who upon being born at the end of World War I in New Orleans, is a baby…..only with lots of wrinkles, cataracts and the general defects that come with being eighty years old.

His mother dies giving birth to him, while his father, Thomas Button (Jason Flemyng), is so appalled by the appearance of his son that he attempts to kill the baby. He is stopped by a security guard and instead Benjamin is placed at the doorsteps of a nursery home, run by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson, a loving and warm performance). She is immediately struck by the baby’s vulnerability as opposed to its grotesque appearance.

She christens him Benjamin, and he “grows up” in the nursery home, alongside equally wizened people who think that he is either really seven years old, or a sevenety year old man who is probably crazy.

It quickly becomes apparent that Benjamin is aging backwards. That is, his mind is aging fowards, but his body isn’t.

The true implications of this are not fully explored, sadly. But, in any case, Benjamin, while a “teenager” on, goes off on several adventures, some of which include a job as a deck hand on a tug-boat run by a crusty captain, a romantic affair with Tilda Swinton in Russia, World War II at sea in the tug boat, until finally he returns home.

In his life, a girl named Daisy (Cate Blanchett) drifts in and out, but it’s made clear that they were made for each other. She sees the youth beneath his old exterior. As they both grow up, she becomes a succesful ballet dancer.

At about the half-way point, the film takes a drastic shift in tone and becomes a romantic-drama. Which is….fine…I guess.

It feels like someone slapped two completely different films together that just happen to have the same actors and premise. Truly, despite the echoeing of older sequences as well as the prosthetic aging of actors, everything from the latter half feels and looks different. While I’m sure this is a stylistic decision…it doesn’t work.

To be honest, the entire gimmick of this man aging backwards and growing younger should be something of the epicenter, which it is…for the first hour and a half or so.

Unfortunately, Fincher loses his way as the film progresses.

But the visual flair, craft and textures are glorious. Most of the film is drenched in stylistic wash: rooms are littered with period detail simply because they can; everything has a sepia/gold tone to it, with flashes of color and light. The special effects are sparkling and amazing.

This leads me to the whole conceptions of Brad Pitt even playing Benjamin Button the entire film, even though, for a good chunk, the actor is not really physically there.

The young sequences are incredible in that the body double has a CGI head that is voiced by Brad Pitt from a recording studio, and yet, the body double, (a very small person mind you) is also performing; miming you might say.

And then the little girl Daisy…is voiced by Cate Blanchett. And it is very obvious. Despite the attempts to cover it up, it becomes increasingly apparent that the voice sounds just a tad too low. A tad too crisp. A tad too….old.

While this is certainly cool, it doesn’t too much than to completely weird you out with its alienating effect.

In any case though, everything is incredible. The tug boat sequences are genuinely great and in some ways, you kind of wish there was more time spent there.

But alas, Fincher clearly wanted to make an epic. There’s a major problem with that though. The film isn’t EPIC enough.

That’s right. Despite some big, spectacular scenes, the sweep, the loads and loads of characters, the big themes, the high romance, the low moments, the everything….it seems too intimate for its own good.

Which is a shame, because this is a film begging to be epic on the scale of a David Lean film.

Fincher does get the look down right, but the pacing, the tone, is generally muddled throughout.

And don’t get me started on the final parts of the film, which is major “What could have been…”-fest.

Obviously, the death of everyone is foregone conclusion in this film. That being said, why in god’s name do they have the incredibly young Benjamin run off for several years for no good reason other than because “Oh, my daughter won’t like me because I’ll be, like sixteen when she’ll be close to twenty….”

But that would’ve been so much more interesting than a bunch of vintage looking footage of Brad Pitt wandering around India for no discernible reason.

Sigh…I digress.

Actually, no, I’m not not done here yet. Why does the adolescent Button suddenly have dementia? That makes….absolutely no sense. Really, it doesn’t. You can’t explain to me otherwise, and if you do, I’ll punch you in the face.

It seems like something went horribly wrong with the writer. Oh wait, he wrote the “Forest Gump” screenplay. Hmmmm…
This might explain the inexplicably disjointed, totally unfunny humor that perhaps he thinks is hilarious….except when it isn’t….which is most of the time.
(Though the man who claimed to have been struck by lightning seven times was genuinely funny. The man who sat by the river…not so much)

Which is a shame, because, really, what I really wanted to see was Benjamin becoming a fetus and then becoming nothing-ness; the size of an atom, and thus, he would’ve been recreated because of some sort of spiritual bull-shit or something.

It certainly would’ve been better than the TWO framing devices used. That’s right, TWO.

Not just one, but two, both of which are completely at odds with each other.

Let me put it this way…the film was in production shortly after Katrina.

And it was shot in New Orleans.

Thus, the first framing device we get is…Old Blanchett being Old, dying, speaking to her daughter. They’re in the hospital, and…Hurricane Katrina is coming up.

What.

Then old Blanchett tells a story about a blind clockmaker who’s son died in WWI, and thus, decided to make a clock that ticked backwards, symbolic of ALL the young men who die, saying that in a hopeful world, perhaps the clock’s backward ticking might bring back everyone home.
This sequence is done as if it was shot on scratchy film stock, complete with hiss and pop sounds.

The blind clockmaker is hardly every brought up again. We do, however, constantly get these jump backs to Blanchett in the hospital and her daughter. These moments bring the film to screeching halts every time it happens.

And then, to top it off, we get the daughter reading Button’s DIARY! ARRRGHHHH. I lied. There’s three framing devices.

Seriously, the story is as much about death and life as it is about time and its persistence. Except….it seemed that Fincher didn’t care about that.

Oh well….

But…like I said before, the film lacks a whimsical quality which is aggresively dropped in favor of serio-romance-drama stuff which is more commonly found on TV movies or TV shows.

In fact, had the aging gimmick been dropped entirely, you would’ve had a typical journeyman Hollywood film. Talk about ironic…

But, it has to be said. Fincher, the actors, everybody…they all do their jobs superbly well. Brad Pitt especially is marvellous is contributing his touches to the incarnations of Benjamin throughout time. His souther drawl is particularly memorable.

The score is quiet, and yet, soft and heavy. It is highly romantic but not sweeping. Whether this is a bad or good thing is up for debate in my book. But it is a wonderful score nonetheless.

I suppose most of the film’s problems can be pinned on the screenwriter, Eric Roth.

So I suppose CURIOUS CASE… is still eligible for another adaptation or even remake, for there are elements introduced that add some nice depth.

The characters at the nursing home is a particularly inspired invention, especially Queenie. Of course, once Benjamin hits the half-way mark, everything is pretty much excised in favor of the love story which is, to be frank, completely and utterly unecessary.

Oh well…what could have been. At least Fincher is the consumate craftsman…

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON has all the heart and soul and passion and warmth of Dick Cheney.

BENJAMIN BUTTON is the story of a man who ages in reverse. Born as a miniature version of an old man, an infant with gray hair and arthritis, he gradually gets younger as he gets older. He gets more limber, his hair gains color, and he basically becomes Brad Pitt (a mixed blessing, as it turns out). Benjamin’s journey from Youthful Old Age to Aged Youthfulness spans about 80 years from WWI to Hurricane Katrina, he witnesses assorted Big Events of the Century, and occasionally meets up with his One True Love Daisy, played by Cate Blanchett.

Comparisons with FORREST GUMP can’t be avoided, and BUTTON has GUMP’s screenwriter, one Eric Roth. GUMP and BUTTON are both set in a Louisiana where things like race and money are never issues. Benjamin’s youthful use of crutches to walk echoes Forrest’s “magic legs,” and the on-again off-again decade-hopping romance between Benjamin and Daisy is a replay of Forrest’s affair with the doomed Jenny. BUTTON has a strange symbolic hummingbird that implausibly shows up at strategic times, a la GUMP’s famous feather. Roth also tosses in elements of THE ENGLISH PATIENT, in a framing device showing Daisy on her deathbed having her daughter read Benjamin’s diary to her as Hurricane Katrina prepares to rage outside.

Think about it. A combination of FORREST GUMP and THE ENGLISH PATIENT.

Still with me? The movie aims hard at being a fantastic-type meditation on time, love and loss. All the signifiers of Hollywood’s version of Serious Cinema are there: luscious production values, cutting edge technology, Oscar-winning actors from abroad, distinguished literary pedigree, nearly three hour length and all that. The movie is a big fat piece of Oscar bait, perhaps the most blatant since the atrocious COLD MOUNTAIN. Fincher seems to have studied Anthony Minghella closely, as it happens: no film since Minghella’s passing shows his influence so thoroughly. There’s a total lack of passion and energy that the director of THE ENGLISH PATIENT and COLD MOUNTAIN would instantly recognize as his own, combined with that Mingellian Delusion Of Relevance that makes his films such agony to sit through. The film goes through its carefully orchestrated and arranged and computer generated paces, each narrative and technological cog clicking into place like the creation of the blind clockmaker in the film’s opening anecdote.

The cutting edge technology is most particularly in evidence in the depiction of Benjamin’s reverse aging. They seem to have used a variety of actors of assorted sizes and added an aged version of Brad Pitt’s face to them where necessary. The results don’t really work terribly well, I don’t think, especially in the first half of the film where Pitt looks more like 70s singer/songwriter Paul Williams than anything else. Pitt doesn’t suffer alone. The process by which Cate Blanchett is made to look about 20 years younger than she is comes off like some hideous page out of Airbrushing For Beginners. These effects keep calling attention to themselves, at the expense of the characters and ultimately the film. It eventually settles down a bit, by the time that Pitt and Blanchett are supposed to be near the same age and can play their roles without techno-cosmetic assistance, when Fincher starts to load on the lingering closeups of Pitt’s astonishing beauty, but it is too little too late.

I’ll say it clearly, because nobody else will. At heart, the film’s biggest problem is right there on the poster and above the title. Brad Pitt’s alleged performance is a colossal bore, a great black hole that sucks the energy out of all that surrounds it. There’s a certain possible justification for some of it, I guess. Benjamin Button is after all a freak of nature. He is fully aware of his difference, and aware of how it might be seen by others, and a certain emotional reserve might be an interesting starting point for an actor to build a performance on. For Pitt, this reserve is the final destination, the beginning middle and end of his attempt at a performance. It isn’t just a matter of the digital tweaking to make him look older or younger. There’s just nothing there. His voice is a flat uninflected monotone. His eyes are unlit with any sign of life. Tens of millions of dollars worth of CGI aging technology and a battery of technicians can’t add life where Pitt doesn’t. Just watch what happens when the sublime Tilda Swinton appears onscreen with Pitt. She lights up the screen in a way that poor old Brad just can’t come near, and quite simply obliterates him. It could be argued that Swinton’s performance is also the one in the film least affected by CGI and latex, but it is more than that. She steals the film by sheer acting ability alone, showing more humanity in one single smile than the rest of the film is able to summon in its entirely indefensible three hour running time.

Life’s too short. Avoid this one. You’re not missing a thing.

Creo que nunca me hubiese puesto frente a esta pelicula sino hubiese dido dirigida por David Fincher. No me interesa ni el tono, ni los actores (quizas un poco si el dúo femenino), ni la trama ni nada. Lamentablemente, si, Fincher la dirigió y ahi fui, con mis expectativas elevadas, esperando ver algo minimamente aceptable (digo minimamente porque, despues de haber visto el trailer, ya habia algo que me olia un poco rancio), expectativas que nunca se cumplieron. No solo es una pelicula exageradamente idiota, sino que lo que mas me molesta esa esas ganas de manipular al espectador, apelar a su aprobación en base al golpe bajo, al llanto imjustifacado, al “llorar porque si”, porque esta hisotria, tan trágica, tan dramática, es triste, entonces, si, “la pelicula me llegó al corazón”, “no sabes que linda que es, no sábes cuánto lloré” y cosas parecidas. Se juzga la calidad de una pelicula en relación a la cantidad de lágrimas que uno llora. Eso es basura. Y lo peor es que la pelicula no se cansa de hacerlo. Todo el tiempo es poner al espectador en una situación de compasión, de necesidad de sentir que lo que le pasa a Benjamin es doloroso, trágico, muy muy triste.

El guionista es el mismo de esa otra gran basura cinemtográfica llamada “Forrest Gump” y lo que hace aca es exactamente lo mismo que hizo en aquella: poner al personaje principal en una cantidad de situaciones extremas (guerra, por ejemplo), en la que siempre se tiene que producir una moraleja que tenga como intención demostrar que la vida es dura, que siempre hay rocas en el camino pero que lo mejor que se puede hacer es vivirla, siempre vivirla. Otra vez basura. Esa vez con tintes new-age, para el colmo. La escena del comienzo, con el personaje de Cate Blanchett narrando toda la historia (era necesario utilizar una narración para poder hacer avanzar la pelicula? De verdad Fincher?) es el despegue ideal para una pelicula que se les va a ingeniar en sus casi dos horas y media de duración en mantener al espectador siempre ahi, con el pañuelo en la mano. Tampoco veo justificada la inclusión del tornado en medio de toda esta situación…Otra vez: era necesario?
Sin embargo, cuando uno piensa la pelicula como un simple y mero producto, las cosas si estan claramente justificadas. Todo es por la bendita estatuilla. Todo es (o fue, porque la pelicula no gano nada, finalmente) por el preciado Oscar que justifica que veamos peliculas como estas todos los años-. Eso eso, nada mas que un simple producto que “nos pega en el corazón”.

Quizas hay una faceta mucho mas humana ahora en Fincher, mucho menos oscura y pesimista. Pero “The Curiouse Case Of Benjamin Button” lo único que hace es presentarse como una gran mancha negra en su filmografia-.

It’s an unlikely source, but an effective one—David Fincher giving us a heartbreaking tale of love discovered, lost, found, and forever enduring. The man responsible for bringing to screen the ultra-sick mind of a serial killer in Seven, the warped sensibilities of Chuck Palahniuk with Fight Club, and the dark streets of a city in fear with Zodiac has crafted a beautifully lyrical film of love and its always-difficult journey. Based on a short story from F. Scott Fitzgerald, screenwriter Eric Roth has taken the premise and random details of plot to create something wholly new. While the original story is full of cynicism and hate, a reverse ugly duckling tale as Ben Button becomes a whipping boy his entire life except for maybe a decade in the middle, the film adaptation is one of beating all odds and making the best of a life that will inevitably end tragically. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s titular character is still afflicted with the same ailment, born a child with an 80-year-old’s body, aging younger as he grows older, yet the “disease” is worked with and overcome. His life moves forward, as his body moves backwards, towards an existence he always dreamed of having, but knew he would never be able to keep.

It’s all handled nicely for a film that reaches close to a three-hour runtime. A story told in flashback, Cate Blanchett’s Daisy is close to death and visited by her daughter Caroline in the midst of Hurricane Katrina when the tale begins. (This fact is my only real questionable call, as I don’t see the reasoning … perhaps having began on the day WWI ended and ending on a day of tragedy in Louisiana is supposed to be cyclical? Either way, I don’t think it was necessary, yet it doesn’t distract, so I don’t mind it.) Daisy wishes to be read to from a diary that she was never able to read herself, the memoirs of Benjamin Button, her one true love. The words being read serve as both a remembrance and validation to the dying woman as well as a truth telling towards the daughter, opening her eyes to the past, a life she never knew about. Benjamin is very candid in his remarks, telling the details of a very uniquely special existence while also the feelings he had for Daisy, a woman he met at age five and eventually met again in the middle, bringing a smile to her face knowing how he felt even way back then.

As any love story shows, it is not always easy. Meeting as a five year old girl and a five-year-old boy who looked eighty—easy was never in the cards. These two children struck a bond that would prove very difficult to break, despite love affairs, broken bones, hurt egos, or thousands of miles in between. Both lived very different lives, arcs that crossed yet never intersected. They needed to experience what was coming to them before they could be ready to finally see each other for the soul mates they were. It is an arduous journey full of eccentric people and events to spice up the action as we wait for the inevitable reunion. Ben Button sees it all: living in a home for the care of the elderly, (“Death was a common visitor”); sailing with the artist and drunk Captain Mike, (the always entertaining Jared Harris); having an affair with the wife of a British ambassador, Elizabeth Abbott, (a wonderful Tilda Swinton); and an upbringing by a poor black woman, (Taraji P. Henson stealing scenes and proving yet again that she will be working for a long time), with the intermittent visits from a kind gentleman seeking conversation, (Jason Flemyng without a trace of his usual strong English accent). It’s a full life that always ends up with the thoughts of a little girl, all “elbows and knees”, who grows into a beautiful NYC dancer, into a woman for whom only tragedy could awaken her true self, shaking the self-pity and pretentiousness away.

The story is strong, allowing for performances that excel at all turns. It may tread into sentimentality at times, but never to the point where it becomes a detriment. Ben Button’s life is always going to eventually end as it began, in reverse. Like the clock built by Elias Koteas’s Monsieur Gateau, a timepiece that ticked backwards as a symbol for all those who have died too young in war, possibly allowing them to be brought back to life, Button’s life is ever moving forward with its back against the wall. His twilight years already passed, old age becomes youth—a youth full of the death of loved ones, a youth that can only be lived alone so as not to cause pain for those you wish to live freely. But as a woman says to him early on, “we’re meant to lose the people we love … how else will we know how important they are?”

I think a lot of credit falls deservedly so onto the shoulders of Cate Blanchett and especially Brad Pitt. Known more for his looks and succeeding on charisma rather than talent, this is the first truly great performance I’ve seen from him as a “normal” guy, (pitch-perfect crazies like in 12 Monkeys don’t apply). With a deliberate New Orleans speech and minimal movement, Pitt’s Button goes through life cautiously and optimistically. He gets stronger and more resilient as the years go by, giving him a young appearance to hide the aged wisdom behind his eyes. And the special effect work to make it all possible is absolutely mind-blowing. How much is prosthetics and how much computer generated, I don’t know, but the aging processes for all are seamless. Even getting heights, weights, and skin smoothness correct, these actors grow and age with visual wonderment. And with gorgeous cinematography to frame it all, there is very little to dislike.

With that said, there was just something missing for me. Much like last year’s There Will Be Blood, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is technically sound and emotionally moving, yet there was still a void unfilled once I left the theatre. David Fincher has crafted a masterpiece that should stand the test of time and I’m sure will be loved by many, but similar to his great work on Zodiac, while wonderful, it just isn’t perfect to me. Again, though, that is just my opinion and I strongly recommend you go see this beautiful piece of cinema, because it is one of the year’s best and I can’t wait to revisit the world in the future, possibly changing my mind and becoming the masterpiece I know it could be.

It’s a beautiful movie to look at moving through 80 or more years of time with certain portions made to look like different film stock. And the mostly New Orleans landscape is wonderful too.

I realized that, when you really think about it, it doesn’t matter that Benjamin Button ages backwards. Not at all! Plot point by plot point just think of Brad Pitt’s character aging normally. It was a fun movie. I enjoyed that it covered such a wide span of history, that it showed a full life being lived. Not the most exciting life, just a nice guy who stays pretty close to home, but still one that experiences love and loss and nearing death with every minute lived just like the rest of us.

Something went wrong in this long film based on the interesting idea of a man who grows old rejuvenating after birth, but could not appropriately be reflected in the final outcome.
Pretentious from the begining, perhaps it is the script that is not strong enough as wanted (and needed) to be to sustain this idea and intention for all it length.
In addition, Fincher has never been seen so distant, where frustration, characteristic shaft of his still short filmography, has been so difficult to perceive in his characters as in his direction.

Not too bad but it wasn’t as moving as you would expect, yet, I was still very much entertained and enthralled. I would say the film is more of a 3 1/2 star fair then 4. But, i will give it 4 stars just to piss off the “Elites” on this sight who had a problem with Criterion distributing this film.

I will agree that this is not Fincher’s best film (Fight Club often sits #1 on my list), but there was something intriguing that kept me watching. Maybe i liked the grand scale of the adventure, but this is also what held the film back. To me, there was not enough Grandness, instead of lying about all of the places he had been, he should have actually done them. Also, the film really down played the fact that he was aging backwards, the "disease, was barely a vehicle in the film, it was portrayed as something that may or may not happen to everyone. The same movie could have been made with his life going forward and we not have noticed the difference. I think more emphasis and exploration into his disease could have caused some sympathy and made us really appreciate every minor adventure he undertook.

David Bax, half of the movie discussing duo known as Battleship Pretension, said that the best kind of movie occurs when the filmmakers working on it don’t even know what the movie is about- because of its sheer size. This does not necessarily constitute an epic- however, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is both the former, and the latter. The idea of a man aging ‘backwards’ is not just the center of the film, but a spring board used to create drama, ripple effect, and inevitably impacting moments along the way. In the surrounding environment that is, in a way, our protagonist’s world, the profound paradox that is Benjamin’s journey becomes less a paradox and more a surprisingly relatable, and yet fantastic, whimsical world. Fantasy and drama intertwine with the characters as they develop, change, or don’t change- just as people do over the course of their lives. While the combination of makeup, special effects, and beautiful cinematography that allow this film to look the way it does, its not the only aspect of artistic craft in Benjamin Button. Chemistry abounds between the film, characters and filmmakers so that even a film this large becomes so…singular. Indeed, Button isn’t perfect. The first act of the film settles strangely and comes off rocky; minor characters and moments could have been more genuine; the score of the film does not match the grandiosity of the rest of the experience. And most of all, Button does not always realize its ambition. Still, flaws are inevitable in a movie this large, when so many risks are taken and convention is not the priority. And yet, David Bax is still right. However flawed it may be, its still just an adjective to the more important descriptor: a masterpiece.

David Fincher’s ambitious and sprawling romance epic is an impressive achievement, though not really Fincher’s best. Masterfully crafted with universally excellent performances, superb cinematography, and a sharply paced script by Eric Roth that even at just under three hours never seems too long – and the special effects are some of the finest ever put on screen, all the more amazing for how subtle – almost unnoticeable – they are. Despite the technical and creative accomplishments, the story just never really takes off, and is bookended by a weak framing device – so it ultimately falls short of the masterpiece if could have been. But still worth seeing as a solid effort from a great artist. Great score by Alexander Desplat.