Tired and trite clichés propped up by digital wizardry

Rating: 4/10 (4 January 2009)

I had such high hopes for this film. The previews for it were visually stunning and it looked like David Fincher had crafted a modern masterpiece. Fincher was coming off the artistic triumph of Zodiac and I assumed this film would follow suit. As a director, Fincher seemed to have shaken off his obsessions with fashionable nihilism. In this light The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a fascinating yet ultimately very hollow film. Fincher is obviously a gifted filmmaker, so it is all the more disappointing that he has tethered his story to banal sentiments that would be better suited to a greeting card.
The first hour of the film holds up quite well to the high standards set by Zodiac. The digital cinematography of the piece is murky, but appropriate in that I believe Fincher wanted it to look like an old photograph. The central conceit of the main character aging backwards is clearly and cleanly established and we are in immediate sympathy with Benjamin Button. Anyone who is related to or knows someone who struggled with a horrible illness at a young age will respond to the early scenes of this film very strongly. Benjamin's wide-eyed naiveté as he tries to grasp the complexities of his special existence is very touching and delicately dramatized. These early scenes have real unforced charm. We get to know not only Benjamin, but the kind African-American woman who shelters him. We are also given a small window into the lives of the other residents of the rest home where Benjamin resides. There are very few movies that have even dared to explore the hardships and also the small compensations of advanced age. These things are not usually discussed in popular entertainments. David Fincher and screen writer Eric Roth should be commended for even broaching some of these issues. Unfortunately, time and again a challenging idea or issue is raised and is then immediately dropped in favor of forced uplift or is simply glossed over completely. Every time things get interesting, the plot kicks into gear and the film falls back on movie logic. The premise of the film is so provocative, that I had real hope after the first hour that we were going into uncharted narrative waters. Sadly, we are then given the usual pseudo-revelations involving doomed romance and familial ties.
Benjamin Button is the window through which we view the other characters. His condition sets the stage for the more colorful characters to behave in eccentric and idiosyncratic ways. The film is essentially a reverse coming of age story. As the film progresses narrative problems start to crop up with alarming frequency. The central issue is that Benjamin never really drives the story. He is a reactive character and because of this you lose interest in his goals. Pitt tries to invest a sense of humanity. However, the blank cipher that is Benjamin Button remains stubbornly vague. We know that Benjamin loves Cate Blanchett's Daisy, but are not given anything further to define his character. Benjamin appears to be a pleasant companion and not much else. As Pitt gradually morphs into the Greek God matinée idol that we all know him to be, the movie deflates like a balloon.
Benjamin's relationship with Daisy is endless and largely drama free. There is a sense of going through the motions with everything that happens in the second part of the narrative. The lovers experience a short idyll, a child is born, and then the narrative demands that Benjamin leave Daisy and go on a vision quest or something. The film does Cate Blanchett few favors as her character changes from scene to scene depending on what the needs of the narrative are. Like Pitt, she is playing an idea rather than a real flesh and blood character. The two of them are so attractive and movie-star like that it actually detracts from what the tragedy of the film is supposed to be. You can't help but wonder why these two are not more thankful for the obvious gifts they have been given? The rote, glamorous Hollywood fantasy is like a tow line holding this film back from the darker waters that it obviously needs to plumb.
The film employs a ridiculous connecting device of having the elderly Daisy dying in a hospital bed in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina approaches. She requests her daughter, a haunted looking Julia Ormond, read to her from Benjamin's diary. A diary that neither she nor her daughter have apparently ever looked at before. This subplot is squirm-inducingly awful. We can see every supposed secret the diary holds coming a mile away. When these plot points are revealed Fincher skips past them, denying them emotional weight and trying to camouflage their utter banality. One would expect that the rapidly approaching Hurricane Katrina would figure into the plot somehow and one would be wrong. Like every other provocation in the film, the enormous human rights disaster that was Katrina is introduced and then shied away from. This bungling of a potentially provocative theme is unforgivable. Fincher and Roth should be ashamed for the short dramatic shrift they give Katrina.
The more I thought about this film, the more I disliked it. Fincher is too intelligent a filmmaker to embrace this sort of dishonest, Hollywood, twaddle. On a technical level the film is second to none, which makes it all the more of a let down that it contains no real ideas about anything. Why is it that entertainment must be so bereft of commentary relating to the real world? Is escape all that filmmakers and audiences aspire to anymore? We live in an era of unprecedented global tumult. I am sorry, but escape is just not good enough for these times. One need only look at the politically and culturally engaged films of the seventies to see what we are missing now.