A disappointment

Rating: 4/10 (28 December 2008)

The disappointment I feel is perhaps more for David Fincher's career than this film. Everything on the surface of 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' appears beautiful - the cinematography, the special effects, the make-up, the cast... everything is about eye candy. It is sweet but like sweets containing high glucose corn syrup, it leaves one irritable and certainly dissatisfied.
I find with most critiques of mainstream, big budget films those who fall into two camps - those taken in by the hype, by the surface of the film and those who feel and understand the film, aware of its flaws. It is the same with bestseller novels.
First of all, the concept of this film was unique. Let us at least take notice of F.Scott Fitzgerald who may or may not have stolen the idea/material from his wife Zelda (whom many scholars believe was the true genius and not her husband). Origins aside, the film has all the trimmings of previous work.
There are some people who are vehement about this being 'not Forest Gump'. I would stress the similarities between the two films and the fact Eric Roth wrote both.
Let us take note of the obvious:
Atypical hero: Forest Gump/Benjamin Button Love Interest Jenny/Daisy Mother (with similar accents) Hero's 'war involvement' Vietnam War/WWII Setting American South/American South Leitmotif Feather/Hummingbird
There are others but those are the most obvious. Let us also remind ourselves both films are narrated by the hero who both happen to have interesting and 'profound' observations about life and their lives.
But if it were simply a matter of being Forest Gump, then I would still have high praise for Benjamin Button. Not so. The majority of this film remains on the surface. Despite all the observations, despite the epic sweep of events that pass through the narrative, we as an audience are rarely allowed to go deeper. Again, the film was based on a unique idea but without the human psychology, without more background on several characters, I found it difficult to relate to any of these characters.
Benjamin Button. He is born old, he grows young. That's all we really know. He lives with old people, he learns to play the piano, he leaves home, he travels, he sees the world. Most of the narrative is about places and meeting people, rarely about being involved with others, what it means or feels like to relate to a world that sees him as old. He is an outsider. How does this feel? We don't really know as an audience. The film is entirely experiential, rarely psychological.
Daisy. We know she had a grandmother. We knows she loves to dance. But little else. What motivated her to dance, why did she love dancing? We don't know. And of course, why of all things did she not have a relationship with her daughter?
The relationship: A man returns from war. He meets a woman that used to be the girl he loved. The woman wants to seduce him. She attempts. He steps back. When this occurs in the film, we don't really understand the reasoning nor the purpose of the scene. Daisy is in town one day. Her and Benjamin go out together. Why is sex so important to Daisy? And why do we have to watch the two characters go back and forth before they land up together? When he visits her in New York, she is immature, a school girl attempting to get him jealous. Yet he is still attracted to her.
There are so many other questions I have about this film and so many things that simply do not make sense. The main one that comes to mind: if you are a dancer, someone who is professionally trained, why in any circumstances would you even think of dancing on a crowded street? The scene in which Daisy was hit by a car was for too unbelievable. She is first held up by a friend with a broken shoe lace. Daisy remains behind. In such a situation, when you have to wait for someone, the last thing you want to do is fool around after waiting. The scene felt convoluted and dumb - not tragic.
The montage in which Daisy and Benjamin find themselves together plays out like all other young lover clichés - they travel together, they make love, they buy a love, they make love in their home, they paint their home (there is a brief, albeit clichéd 'lovers painting the wall' scene ... yawn...seen it...). I didn't find this film to be magical, just a mosaic of previous formulas and scenarios. Benjamin 'youthens', he leaves her. He comes back later. Throughout the entire film, the audience really doesn't know or understand or get a sense of what it means to grow 'young' nor what kind of effect it might have on others.
I felt very tired after watching this picture. The first half was not bad. My interest was kept, I enjoyed the characters but when I started feeling lost and cheated, that I would never get any closer to the lives, feelings and deeper philosophies, and what with some of the frustrating scenes between Daisy and Benjamin, I began to grow impatient.