The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Review

Director: David Fincher
Writer: Eric Roth
Starring: Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett
Runtime: 2 hours 47 minutes

I would love to have been on the set during the shooting of this movie. A lot of the film takes place in an old folks' home, where a backward-aging Brad Pitt learns about life from various charismatic geriatrics. I wonder how David Fincher directed them, or more to the point, how the elderly actors enjoyed being directed by David Fincher.

If you go back and watch Se7en and listen to the director's commentary, you will discover that David Fincher knows how to swear with the best of them. Longshoremen and 18th century British soldiers don't hold a candle to Fincher when it comes to the F-word. Hearing him rattle off "the f-ing shot" this and "the f-ing scene" that during the commentary becomes almost comic. You can tell that he loves the word.

Fast forward 13 years and you have David Fincher directing a room full of old timers in Benjamin Button. I wonder if he reined in the gutter talk while filming the movie, or if the elderly actors simply put up with it because they were in a Brad Pitt movie? (This reminds me of William Friedkin and The Exorcist. Before shooting the climactic bedroom scene with Max von Sydow, Friedkin rewrote the dialogue for the Devil, played by pre-teen Linda Blair. Von Sydow had to say "cut" while shooting because he couldn't believe the foul language coming out of the child's mouth. It wasn't in any script he'd read. Friedkin told him tough luck, deal with it. With everything and anything coming out of child actors' mouths today, it's hard to believe any actor would say "cut" these days).

When I saw that Fincher was slated to direct Benjamin Button, I was perplexed and curious. Actors and directors sometimes go against type and the results can be disastrous. For the most part, directors stick to what they're good at, or they're forced to stick to what they're good at by the producers that hire them.

Here's Fincher's resume, not including his music videos:

Alien 3 - creatures rip people to shreds, until the people blow the aliens to pieces.
Se7en - a psycho mutilates people.
The Game - a man is psychologically terrorized.
Fight Club - a man is initiated into a club where people smash each other's faces to pulp until the world descends into chaos.
Panic Room - a woman is trapped in her own home while people try to kill her.
Zodiac - a psycho in San Francisco goes on a killing spree.

Those are Fincher's flicks from the last two decades. They all have one thing in common: violence. They almost all have another thing in common: they're pretty good. Only Panic Room was a dud for everybody (including Jodie Foster, who somehow starred in it), and The Game, which some people thought was brilliant and I thought was silly at best.

Fincher
Looking at that resume, you might understand my curiosity when I heard that Fincher was going to direct an epic about aging, love, and life. Say what? No killer? No bloodbath? Nobody getting tossed off buildings or machinegunned in the street?

Nope. Just Brad Pitt, born old and "aging" in reverse. The film follows him from his "infancy" as a baby with cataracts and wrinkles, until "grows" into a "child" again.

It's an interesting concept, based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. It's my guess that Fitzgerald's story found inspiration from Shakespeare. It's worth reading in full:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

It's the "second childishness" line that drives the story of Benjamin Button. Another inspiration for the writer of the film could have come from Shaw: "Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children." Or perhaps Twain: "Youth is wasted on the young."

It's pretty obvious that a good many writers spent time lamenting the fact that once they were old enough to know better, they were too old to do anything about it. (Note that Shakespeare doesn't make the mistake of remembering youth as being mystically fantastic; re-read his lines above about infancy and being a schoolboy).

Benjamin Button is not a terribly moving film. It is a simple story, told well, and it ends well. It's satisfying. I didn't find any surprises in it, save one: growing young wouldn't be as great as Twain and Shaw thought it would be. When Benjamin Button grows young, he shows you that you grow young alone. What woman wants to date a man that will regress to puberty when she is joining a bridge club? What relationships will you be able to keep when you go rockclimbing while your friends want to take a nap? This made the film worthwhile; it isn't a romp.

The cast is good. Brad Pitt is the same Brad Pitt. I've never been convinced of his acting chops, but he drives a movie and brings in the crowds, so what difference does it make? The effects in the movie are very well done. When Button is an old, stooped "child," he looks it. When he's a youthful "old man," he's a handsome Brad Pitt from the old days and the ladies will swoon.

When you know Fincher's history, you're impressed that he was able to turn on a dime and tell this story. The man doesn't need blood, violence, and profanity after all. He's a director and he's a good one. If anything, this movie is a very good career move: doors will open for him into any genre he wants to explore. As an audience, we're lucky to have him.

Photos: Yahoo Movies