Film Review | Sunday, 15 February 2009

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Ravages of time

By Teodor Reljic

Every once in a while, there comes a film that reminds you why you bother with cinema in the first place. In this jaded day and age, when spectacle has all but faded from view and the ubiquity of digital technology has made all entertainment artefacts into accessible commodities with no ceremony to them, it seems almost impossible that a film can be experienced with the wide-eyed joy and breathtaking earnestness with which we would devour them as children. Luckily, there are exceptions to the rule. In my humble opinion, Pulp Fiction did it back in 1994, as Tarantino’s crackling dialogue and playful structure gave a lease of life to the crime genre. More recently, I was also blown away by Cloverfield, a film that would have been utterly useless were it to be filmed in the conventional way, but add a Blair Witch-style shaky cam onto a monster movie, and the experience is altogether different. Sometimes all you need is a jolt in the right direction, a clever gimmick to recapture that sense of innocence in your audience.
Of course: arid types will nitpick. They’ll bemoan the superficiality of spectacle and the contrivances required to get us there. In fact, a lot of the criticism of David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button seems to arrive from this camp. The virtuoso special effects are truly something, but what’s ultimately most impressive about Fincher’s loose adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story of the same name is that they fade into the background, allowing the picaresque tale to leisurely roll on. There’s a hint of something twee in the title of the film itself, an indication of quaint bafflement. This is sustained throughout the whole film but held together by the central premise.
It is 1918, and America is celebrating the end of WWI. As the fireworks crackle and the crowds cheer, a baby is born…and promptly abandoned by its father on the doorstep of a nursing home. Killing its mother at birth, the child also appears to have been born with all the physical attributes of an 80-year old man. He is adopted by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) and Tizzy (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) and is subsequently raised in the nursing home, before embarking on a journey of discovery across America.
This is Fincher’s third film with Brad Pitt, though at first glance, their working relationship seems to be the only common thread between Benjamin and the other two minor masterpieces: Se7en and Fight Club. Having honed a razor-sharp style thanks to his experience in advertising and music videos (everyone from Madonna to The Rolling Stones), Fincher became the maestro of the coolly crafted dark thriller. For this reason, it is particularly interesting to see him handle this Forrest Gump-ish (the screenwriter Eric Roth is the connection here) subdued epic. Does he stumble? Yes, he does. But that doesn’t prevent Benjamin from being an utterly charming piece of cinema.
The bad: Fincher’s previously economical (if vertiginous) plots haven’t exactly prepared him for a film of this magnitude, so some jerkiness is evident. Most notably, the need to explain away the phenomenon of Benjamin’s de-aging just comes off as unnecessary, and the scenes involving the fantastical figure of Monsieur Gateux - who creates a clock that moves backwards in a desperate attempt to bring back the dead veterans of the Great War - simply weigh down the already hefty two-hour running time. But this is a minor point and once Benjamin’s predicament is established, the characters introduced and the setting contextualised, the film moves forward effortlessly.
A strong supporting cast is necessary to provide some flavour to what is essentially Benjamin’s coming-of-age story (albeit a bizarre one), and luckily, Fincher has amassed some impressive talent to stand alongside Brad Pitt. Jared Harris, a character actor who seems to be employed to add an edgy tang to the proceedings (with roles in Sylvia, Igby Goes Down and The Notorious Bettie Page) clearly relishes his role as Mike, a tugboat who employs a pubescent Benjamin and teaches him the preliminaries of life (read: alcohol and women). Tilda Swinton strikes a note between cynicism and longing as she engages in an affair with our hero. But it falls to Cate Blanchett, who plays Daisy, Benjamin’s childhood sweetheart, to extrapolate most of the emotional weight from both the hero and the film itself…something she manages with grace. Her attempted seduction, as she shows off the new abstract dance routines she has been learning while immersed in a world far away from the idyll Benjamin longs for, is a captivating performance. The scene itself is worth the price of admission, as Fincher and Blanchett work in perfect collusion, creating a work of effortless beauty.
And there is something to the way the film just moves forward, all its elements tinkering in agreement as grand themes and grander historical truths are explode and implode in the background. In the end, it takes someone as edgy as Fincher to tackle a story like this successfully. Its impact stems from both a careful construction of individual scenes and a devil-may-care attitude towards the more weighty subject matter: I can already hear the conscientious filmgoers furrowing their eyebrows at how the war and issues of race are treated as marginal to Benjamin’s story. And for this reason, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will doubtless remain a film very close to the heart. With an endearingly subdued performance from its star and wonderfully sumptuous period detail, it takes you on a wonderful journey. They don’t make them like this anymore.

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