Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The
CGI, CGI will tear us apart, again
dir: David Fincher
2008
David Fincher almost gets a lifetime pass from me for Fight Club. It’s a film so goddamn good that it elevates him into the lofty heights of directors whom I’ll defend even if they make twenty shitty films compared to their one or two masterpieces. Brad Pitt has no such pass from me, lifetime or otherwise. I have such a deep antipathy for his brand of actoring that he is usually the weakest link (for me) even in the strongest of films.
This flick, right off the bat, I enjoyed, very much so, despite the fact that there is less going on here than meets the eye. The premise sounds like it’s high concept enough, but it’s used more for its ironic sense than anything else. A F. Scott Fitzgerald short story is the origin of the film’s screenplay, but it has been fleshed out and elaborated upon in order to make it a serious, prestige Oscarbait contender, instead of the Twilight Zone half-hour that it probably warranted instead.
In the early part of the 20th Century, a clockmaker grieves over the death of his son in the Great War. He constructs a clock for a train station that runs backwards instead of forwards, with the (poetic, not literal) hope that such a clock going backwards would reverse time and resurrect the many sons who died needlessly, bringing them home to their devastated families.
It is, without doubt, the most touching moment of the movie. It occurs in the first few minutes, and, truth be told, the flick never matches or exceeds those moments from there onwards. It does, however, remain interesting.
As the war ends, a baby is born to a woman who dies in childbirth. The aggrieved father, hoity toity Mr Button (Jason Flemyng) is angry at the newborn before he even sees it. Despite promising to his dying wife that he will not abandon the child, he dumps Benjamin on the back doorstep of an old folk’s home.
The baby looks aged and wizened, and suffers from ailments most often associated with the ancient and nearly dead. The merciful Queenie (Taraji P. Nelson), the African-American woman who runs the old folk’s home, takes pity on the poor child, and elects to look after him for as long as he’s got. No-one expects the little mutant to live for long.
