The Curious Case of David Fincher

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2009)

A self-defeating thought crossed my mind when I first learned of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button": is David Fincher going mainstream on me? Pretty ironic if he is, considering the thrust of his film-making career has been completely within the multimillion-dollar blockbuster range, replete with A-List stars (most notably his repeat collaborations with Brad Pitt). Yet Fincher is one of the most unlikely, unassuming directors working today, probing the dystopian ("Alien3"), the grotesque ("Se7en"), and the darkly satirical ("Fight Club") on a level that backhands the notion that Hollywood can only pump out light, easily-forgotten entertainments.
A story about a man who is born old and proceeds to age backwards, for instance, seems like the recipe for trite sentiment and Oscar nods, and while "Benjamin Button" will certainly be up for the latter, Fincher manages to transform it into a meditativeand remarkably maturerecord of life itself, in all its highs and lows.
In his third turn as Fincher's leading man, Brad Pitt plays the title character, born to a button tycoon's wife in 1918 New Orleans, abandoned on a doorstep of a rest home, and raised by a black couple who acknowledge Benjamin's condition as miraculous and heaven-sent (one of the film's most stunning setpieces has the wrinkled, midget-sized man "walking" for the first time at a tent revival). A decrepit old man at the age of seven, Benjamin meets Daisy, the axis on which his life will revolve. The film unravels in a grandly classical way, framed by the dying Daisy's daughter (Julia Ormond) reading journal passages from the hospital as Hurricane Katrina rages outside.
Through the conviction of the performances and Fincher's deft handling, the notion of "wrongness" at a physically older man falling for a young girl (while the two possess an equal maturityor lack thereof) is curtailed into something affecting and true. The extent to which the relationship between Benjamin and Daisy (played as an adult by Cate Blanchett) is pushed (both literally and figuratively) is the central unpredictable element that keeps "Curious Case" from falling into shopworn sentimental pap. This is probably the first time I have fallen so deeply in love with characters whose experiences impart lessons both genuine and sincere, and reflect people as they truly do change with age.
That being said, Eric Roth's heavily-expanded adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story becomes too obliquely ponderous at times, particularly Benjamin's adventures with a tattooed tugboat captain (Jared Harris) and an English spy's society wife (Tilda Swinton) with ambitions of swimming the English Channel (after an unsuccessful attempt). While these interludes do enrich Benjamin's character, just as much could have been imparted had they been abbreviated.
But the love story is the driving force of "Curious Case," and it's a testament to Fincher's versatility as a filmmaker (and the palpably passionate performances of Pitt and Blanchett) that he stages every shot in a manner to evoke the greatest emotional impact without coming off as plaintive and sentimental. Furthermore, his love of state-of-the-art visual effects remains on full display (he still wields CGI better than any director working today), particularly in the backward transformation of Benjamin, culminating in a scene of "birth" that is at once painful and beautiful.
7.5 out of 10