The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Let’s Play Old People!
Movie Reviews January 1st. 2009, 10:20pmLot’s of people will like this movie. Lot’s of people like Brad Pitt and refuse to see any flaw in anything he does. The film looks good. I enjoyed much of the visuals, but the frequent flashbacks (to the present) were rather annoying. The story is intriguing. I like fantasy and the paradox explored is fun to discuss. Believe me, I rail regularly at how cruel fate is to grant wisdom and knowledge with age and commensurate frailty of body. The performances are pretty good when Pitt and Blanchett can act their relative ages. For some reason actors think they have to do these age transformations to prove something to the guild. The hours of makeup are some kind of badge of honor, it seems. Pitt and Blanchett try hard and it was distracting. You could tell they were ‘acting’ old with all the usual old people business you might see in an actor’s workshop. Why New Orleans and the old southern accents? Couldn’t Cate do any other American accent? And since the story has nothing in common with F. Scott’s short story, (except the title and theme of living life from old to young) why not let her talk like an Aussie? I don’t think Pitt can carry a picture on his own. His devotion to the art is genuine, but I don’t think he has the chops. It seems he’s always Brad Pitt doing some other character. As Olivier is alleged to have quipped to Dustin Hoffman while making Marathon Man, “…try acting…”.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:07 pm
I had a few issues with this move as well. The first thing that bothered me as that there was no “closure” with Daisy and BB’s daughter. Other than a tool to allow the story to be told, I felt no emotional connection with the daughter and wondered why Daisy waited until her death bed to talk to her daughter about the curious case of BB. I also thought using Hurricane Katrina could have been an interesting plot device, but it went no where as well. I kept thinking that Daisy would tell her daughter to go to the maternity ward where she could meet and take care of her father, but that did not happen.
Second, and more important, I didn’t “get” the movie. When my wife and I walked out of the movie, I told her that there were two groups of people in the crowd – either those who scratched their heads and didn’t “get it” or those who thought they got it and were fooling themselves into thinking the movie was profound – such as Forest Gump. I can’t imagine a third group of people who actually “got it”, because I’m not sure there really was a theme or message to the story – which might have been the point, but that seems like a reach ala Tom Hanks and Castaway. I liked the acting but with no redeeming storyline, I couldn’t connect with any of the characters. I even did a search on the internet to see what the theme/message of Fitzgerald’s play was, but I couldn’t find anything substantive other than many movie reviews, which seemed to be split on the movie and performances. In the end, I ended up scratching my head (and still am) still curious about Benjamin Button.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:21 pm
I don’t think there was much to ‘get’. Love, Sacrifice, and Fate are all there is. Read the short story online. It takes only 10-15 minutes and is more interesting than the movie. It is also the very opposite of the movie. It is set in Baltimore at the time of the Civil War. Why Katrina? The answer has to be on the cutting room floor. The director’s cut may give a clue, but I don think I’ll be that curious.