Curiously unmoved by Benjamin Button

Rating: 5/10 (10 December 2008)

This film review contains the biggest plot spoiler of all time: simply put, the plotting is horrible. The filmmakers have taken an engaging idea and allowed it to wander off half-cocked and unfocused, until it finally just closes its eyes and dies.
This does not have the sympathetic emotional complexities of "Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (similar theme of emotional disambiguation) nor the complicated psychological interweaving of "Fight Club" (same director.) Instead, it is a rambling, shambles of a film which lacks the emotional depth and honesty required to provoke a truly heartfelt response from the audience. The ultimate result is hollow and unsatisfying.
That said, pretty much everything else about it is good: art, design, cinematography and acting are excellent. Even the script's not bad: the dialog and the concept are intriguing, the characters are interesting, but ultimately, what the filmmakers choose to do with all that good work is so ad hoc that it drains the sympathy out of the predicament.
So here's the problem laid out in full:
***even more plot spoilers***
The story is set in New Orleans. An old woman is dying in hospital as Hurricane Katrina is approaching. To distract her mother, the daughter reads to her from the diary of a friend: Benjamin Buttons.
Benjamin was born as a baby-sized old man, and grows younger as his life proceeds. His mother dies in child birth and his father, appalled by the little freak, dumps him at an old people's home (which is a nice twist on leaving a baby outside an orphanage.) A woman working at the home is childless - and accepts the baby as her own private miracle. Parallels are drawn between infancy and senility.
Daisy, the granddaughter of an elderly resident, comes to visit. She and Benjamin are both seven years old, and it's love at first sight. Benjamin looks like he's 70 so it's a little creepy but we get it: love sees through the human veneer of time and space.
As they age, Benjamin gets younger, and Daisy gets older. After many failed attempts, they become lovers at the age of 43. Unexpectedly, they also have a baby daughter. Everything is about to become most interesting; the standard convention of older men marrying young women will be put on its head; the father and daughter will both be 21 at the same time; the conflicts inherent between an older wife and her younger husband will be explored; will love also see through that veneer?
But the film doesn't go there. Instead, Benjamin leaves Daisy after celebrating their daughter's first birthday taking my interest in the story with him. His explanation to Daisy is that he's being noble: he will become too young to help raise their daughter to adulthood, and will then become an infantile burden on Daisy.
As it is, Daisy marries again, her second husband dies, and she ends up nursing Benjamin in his second childhood, anyway. And Hurricane Katrina? It doesn't amount to much.
***F. Scott Fitzgerald***
The underlying idea for the film is based on a short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was written in 1922, which may be why the film has been set in that period (rather than the belle epoque as the story is.) Many of the rudimentary ideas are the same, but the short story is more directly focused on Benjamin and his changing relationship with his father, wife and son.
In the Fitzgerald story, the wife is middle aged at 35, and a matronly by 43. Benjamin is able to raise his son, but by the age of 30, they start to swap places. Finally, the analogies of infancy and senility that are found at the start of the film, are at the end of the short story.
Ultimately, it seems as though the filmmakers were squeamish about directly engaging with the question of aging once the characters pass 40. The very old are fair game - but the power years? 40 - 65? I'd love to see the market research on that lot. Cate Blanchett is a magnificent beauty who will be 40 next year, and yet the film makers seem squeamish about giving her a look that is convincingly middle aged. Her makeup is great as the dying Daisy, but three years earlier in the films chronology, she looks barely 50.
I was thoroughly moved by Fincher's manifesto on the state of manhood in 'Fight Club'. I expected him to be as raw and real on the tyranny of time, and am plainly disappointed that he wasn't.