Spectacular makeup effects do not make up for a densely boring narrative

Rating: 7/10 (21 January 2009)

David Fincher, as brilliant and astonishing a filmmaker as he is, is a meticulous perfectionist. Some films show this off for the better (Fight Club, Se7en and The Game), while others falter and are weakened by it (Zodiac and Panic Room). So it should have surprised no one when the buzz came in over all the problems associated with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And unsurprisingly, this film also suffers from that perfectionist stroke.
Benjamin (played prominently by Brad Pitt) is born just after World War I with a rare disease that makes him age backwards; appearing older when he is young, and younger when he gets older. He is left on the porch of an elderly home as a baby, and is almost carelessly discarded for how hideous he looks. But one of the staff members, Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) takes him in and raises him as her own. Gradually as Benjamin ages, he grows younger and can begin to do more. But he is seen differently by everyone who meets him, leading him down various journeys and paths.
Fincher has crafted his second epic (the first being the slow-burn crime drama Zodiac), and has stumbled on the same mistakes he did the first time. He starts off with a great opening and first act, packed with the minutest of details that I doubt anyone could spot everything he is conveying in one sitting. But as the film takes off into its second and third acts, it becomes inundated with too many details and too few interesting moments. The film is a mere fourteen minutes longer than The Dark Knight, but it feels like an eternity longer. As it trucks along, Benjamin Button just slowly becomes more boring when it should become more interesting. What should be focused more heavily on is not, and what is, should not be. It feels like Fincher is trying to up himself over and over again, while still pleasing everyone else. He used to know when to say cut, but here, he seems to have totally lost himself in trying to build an epic that did not need to be as lengthy as it is.
A key reason for this is because of a love story between Benjamin and Daisy (played prominently by Cate Blanchett). He meets her as a young boy (although he looks like a senior nearing death), and falls in love. The love story between the two seems cute and sweet at first (despite being a touch creepy because of Benjamin's initial appearance versus Daisy's), but slowly becomes melodramatic and overbearing. Yes, the character of Daisy is integral to the story, but by the end, she seems to be a nuisance. An epic is not an epic because of an eternity spanning love story. It is the storytelling method that makes an epic, and unfortunately, hinging it on something like this is a bit amateur. Surely Fincher could have helped fixed up Eric Roth's screenplay to be a lot stronger?
What also does not help is the chemistry between Pitt and Blanchett is not all there. Yes, they work off each other well, but for long lost lovers to become connected after so many years, they do not do a convincing enough job. The chemistry practically emanates between Pitt and relative newcomer Madisen Beaty, who plays a teenaged version of Daisy. How can Pitt make a relationship more convincing with someone who is so much younger, than someone he has actually worked with in the past? Sure, we can chalk it up to the CGI wizardry being used at that point in the film, versus later on, but surely Pitt can act better as himself than as a special effect?
Pitt carries the film fairly well, but is not particularly well suited for the role. He does well as the younger Benjamin, exploring and learning about life, but as the wiser and older Benjamin, he seems to waver. Like the film, he is great in the first half, and slowly falls apart as the film goes on. Blanchett has done much stronger work than this, and is surprisingly tame in her performance. It is actually the supporting cast that does a great job. Henson is astonishing in her nurturing mother role, bringing just the right amount of humanity and zest to a character that could have easily been phoned in as a stereotype. Jared Harris does excellent work as Captain Mike, and Jason Flemyng is great as Benjamin's dad Thomas.
But the real reason anyone should even attempt to sit through this mess of an ambitious film are the spectacular special effects. Making Brad Pitt look like a feeble old man who looks nothing like the actor is clearly not an easy thing to do. But every scene, whether it is actually the man himself caked behind enormous amounts of makeup (whether to make him look ancient or to look like the golden boy we first remember him as back in the early 1990s), or he is digitally placed in there, looks just as realistic as the next. You will believe that Pitt is really that age. The effects are just that believable. I was simply stunned watching him on-screen, interacting with other people. It is almost terrifying to think how far we have come that something like this could look as realistic as it does (likewise to Blanchett, who spends a good portion of the film behind an endless amount of makeup as well).
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not a bad film, but it is not the great film it could have been either. It could have been so much stronger if Fincher was a little less of a perfectionist. Cutting a good forty minutes out would have done this movie an immense amount of good. For such an ambitious effort, it makes a lot of silly mistakes.
7/10.