Twig-thin, pretentious garbage

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2009)

I should have known it was going to happen eventually. There's always one potential Oscar film that I absolutely hate, and in 2008 it is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. To get it out of the way immediately: yes, the film is technically accomplished. It totally deserves to be nominated for all the technical categories, including score and cinematography. It is absolutely gorgeous at times. But so freakin' what? The film behind those technical accomplishments is just plain bad. The film is about a man who is born old and ages backward. He falls in love with a girl who is in reality the same age as he, but he has to wait for her to grow up and for him to grow down. Cool concept, yeah? I was aware of this story since way back when Spike Jonze was talking about doing it, around 2000. I've been waiting for it for the better part of this decade. But you know what? It's just a gimmick. I don't know what F. Scott Fitzgerald's original story is about, how he uses that gimmick, but Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth do absolutely nothing with it. The backward aging thing doesn't provide any insight into how a life is lived. Ben Button the character has no insight, besides a few banal observations. The film has no historical point of view. Set in New Orleans from the end of WWI and ending, chronologically, at Hurricane Katrina, it has almost nothing to say about the 20th or 21st Centuries. This is particularly obvious when there are black and white characters interacting with each other as if no such thing as racial tension existed. Many of the film's critics note its similarities to Forrest Gump, which was also written by Eric Roth. Yes, there are many honest and insightful arguments against Forrest Gump, but at least it didn't turn its back on history the way Ben Button does (though it does, of course, polish it far too much). So little happens in the film, it's almost amazing that they were able to stretch it out for nearly three hours. The film just gives us bland sentiments, two dimensional characters whom I didn't come close to caring about, lots of talk about life and death but no real philosophies on it and no sense of time or place, except for the most generic sort possible. I haven't mentioned the actors yet. This disaster isn't at all their fault. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, both fine actors, are given little to do. I guess you could kind of praise Pitt's old man act, but much of the impressiveness of that is due to the special effects and makeup. Taraji P. Henson is getting a lot of praise for her role as Queenie, Benjamin's adoptive mother. She's probably the best actor in the film, but this kind of mammy role is below her talents. No black woman should have to waste her time in such a stereotypical role. The only performances I liked at all were those of Jared Harris, who is a lot of fun as a sea captain, and Tilda Swinton, who is always good. I blame most of this movie on Roth, whose script is so extraordinarily vapid, but Fincher is partly at fault. This just isn't his kind of movie, and it's obvious he isn't able to handle sentimental material. I hate his most famous films, Se7en and Fight Club, because I find them both disgusting, cruel and cynical in a dangerous way. He found his perfect match, in my mind, last year with Zodiac, which utilized his clinical style perfectly. He seems to approach movies with a detached procedure, much as the investigators and journalists of Zodiac are supposed to operate. A grand love story, which Button purports to be (but never is), requires a director more in touch with his emotions.