A fantasy that failed to transport

Rating: 3/10 (26 December 2008)

For me, a good movie is more than an intriguing premise. It is more than the casting of my favorite actor or actors. It is certainly more than clever, state-of-the-art special effects. A good movie is one that touches my heart and captures my imagination. Benjamin Button was not, for me, a good movie. Quite the contrary, unfortunately.
I entered the theater with the certainty that I was about to be delighted and instructed. From the film's premise, I expected to be entertained and moved by a fantasy about life's precious impermanence and the beauty of aging and loss, fueled by great chemistry between the film's lead actors. I adore films that show how our lives struggle against time and mortality, including Ground Hog Day, Eternal Sunshine, and Stranger Than Fiction. It was the transformation of the premise into a movie for flesh-and-blood folks like myself and my husband, who had just shlepped through the snow after a forty-five minute train ride downtown, and, coffee cups in hand, craning our necks in the third row, wanted, needed, dare I say even deserved, to be transported, mesmerized, and awestruck.
I'm crushed to say that we weren't.
The film was lackluster. I felt no sense of wonder, only repulsion at the gremlin-like infant, and at the mask-like makeup of Pitt and Blanchett at the beginning of the film. And as many have commented, I could not identify emotionally with Pitt's charmless characterization of Benjamin as a youth trapped in the prison of a feeble body. Where was his frustration, his yearning, his emotional roller coaster as he struggled to transcend his condition? I didn't see it or feel it. So I waited to feel something, anything.
And I did. I felt increasing annoyance at Blanchett's mumbling on her deathbed, to which scene we returned dozens of times, chopping up the ongoing storyline. I felt worried about my husband, who, despite the caffeine, appeared to be slipping in and out of consciousness. I felt embarrassed by the cheap attempts at slapstick humor: the holy-roller preacher drops dead at his own prayer meeting, Benjamin projectile vomits after his first night of drinking, Benjamin discovers his youthful prowess in the tub while still a wrinkled prune.
I am no stranger to the fleeting poignancy of life, the bittersweet sorrow of watching vital and vigorous loved ones dwindle and falter. Yes, there can be beauty in it. When people die, we do realize how much they mean to us, and how much life means, just as the movie states. Unfortunately, this statement is made a cliché uttered by a minor character. I wish that, instead, the movie had simply shown us this universal truth, through the unfolding of a specific tale of characters we feel for, rather than trying to force it down our throats with tedious determination.
The movie depresses rather than uplifts. Not because it doesn't try to illuminate, but because it puts all its effort into surface appearance: make-up, clever visuals like the enormous clock or the backwards-running film of doomed soldiers impossibly returning home unscathed from battle. Film is visual, but it is also emotional. I want such visuals to touch my emotions, not my intellect. I don't want to say, "Oh, I get it, Brad Pitt looking from his wheelchair at some playful kids his own age means that he feels trapped by time and wishes he could break free from his body and play with them." I want to experience it with him. Instead, all I see is a grotesque mask and the heavy hand of the filmmaker manipulating the "character" of Benjamin like a toy soldier, moving him from scene to scene: Benjamin as curious youth, Benjamin as roving young man. Yes, I see, but I never feel with him, let alone for him.
The only thing that kept me nudging my husband awake was my interest in watching Brad Pitt's make up evolve. I was so disengaged by the action that the only suspense was waiting for Brad Pitt to revert to hottie. Unfortunately, my husband couldn't wait, and just before Brad's actual physique appeared, we tiptoed out of the theater, feeling older by the minute, but grateful that we had opted to regain what little time we had left.
We felt cheated. I had opened my heart and mind, and I felt I had been forcefed tedious, obvious, and morbid chunks of "wisdom" and "poignancy" that I feel we as humans already get. No one who has experienced youth or advancing age cannot get what it all means, and how bittersweet it all is. What I wanted was to see something magic and true unfold. Fantasy can show us truths in ways that realism cannot. I didn't feel the magic, I didn't feel transported, I didn't learn a lesson of the heart. I whiled away the minutes wondering what was so funny about Benjamin being unfairly mistaken for a pedophile. I wondered what Hurricane Katrina was going to do to the hospital when it hit. I wondered why no one objected to a black woman in those times raising a white son. I wondered whether the concession clerk had mistakenly sold me decaf instead of regular. I truly began to speculate about the nature of the passing of time, and why it was passing so terribly slowly.
In reading descriptions of the second half the movie, I realize that, while not getting to see Cate and Brad in their prime was disappointing, to have stayed for the second half would only have been more disappointing. I don't ask for movies to feed me Hallmark sentiments. I am tough; I can take whatever message is delivered. I just don't see how the distracting medium of this film does justice to its message. The artifice fails to take wing. Clearly, others fell under its spell. Wish I could have, but it left me cold and resentful.