David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a remarkable film and the best of 2008. It's been nominated for 13 Academy Awards, more than any other film this year, and deserves at least one more for Cate Blanchett. Yet despite being the 6th most positively reviewed film of the year
, there has been an inordinate amount of critical backlash toward it.
For all the snobiness inherent in so many film reviewers, the hatred makes sense. Buzz has been surrounding the film for nearly a year when the first trailer appeared and Benjamin Button was anointed the Best Picture front runner long before its release date. Critics hate hype, especially when it comes from a star-studded, big budget film begging to be lauded with awards that it may or may not deserve. A film like that is the equivalent of the Patriots in last year's Super Bowl: no one, besides die hard Patriots fans, wanted an undefeated, record-setting team to win. The team was too loaded, just like to many critics Benjamin Button is too loaded to warrant being a respectable film. "Real" sports fans retained their reputation by bashing the Patriots and critics who champion purely independent and foreign films have already begun the crusade against Benjamin Button. They want to see the film fail and they'll take any shot possible to knock it down.
The current favorite critical noogie is to closely link Benjamin Button to Forrest Gump and claim that little separates the two. Critics make this claim because the films share a screenwriter (Eric Roth), and, according to Spout's Karina Longworth, they "both put groundbreaking special effects to the service of sprawling stories, spanning many decades and weaving a breadcrumb trail through modern American history, in which a man holds a torch for a woman who can’t reciprocate his love until her dreams of autonomy are spectacularly dashed."
For Longworth, "the Gump comparison is a pejorative, a shorthand way to say, 'This film will likely make a lot of money and win a lot of awards, and yet is so phony and cloying and gimmicky that its success will some day be seen by some as a tragedy,'" just as "true" cinema fans (myself included) cry foul that Gump beat out their beloved Pulp Fiction for Best Picture in 1994. Longworth furthers her attack by saying that "[i]t’s a film about the feat of its own whiz-bang, Frankensteinian digital imagery, drunk on its own accomplishment to an extent that feels quasi-ethical."
While the effects are stunning, critics like Longworth are missing the point of the film. In turn, these viewers deny themselves the wondrous discovery that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is far too complex to be a child of Gump.
Exceptional effects are capable of furthering a film's story and making audiences feel deeply about the characters. In a story as unusual as Button (for those who don't know, Benjamin, played by Brad Pitt, is born an old man the size of a baby, and gets younger on the outside as he grows older) , why shouldn't the effects play a major part? How else are we to experience the unique feeling of being around Benjamin without us, too, being in awe of him? Never is this more true than when he shows up in Daisy (Blanchett)'s studio as a beautiful-faced teen. Benjamin is a one-of-a-kind human being, and it takes likewise original effects to fully flesh out his story.
Additionally, Longworth is perturbed by very small pieces of the film, including the 4-second scene of Benjamin and Daisy resting on his sailboat off the Florida coast while a NASA launch is seen behind them. However, it's scenes like this that distance Benjamin Button from its Best Picture predecessor. Forrest Gump hit audiences over the head with its protagonists' interaction with history. In Benjamin Button, the references, like the NASA launch, are far more subtle. Additionally, Benjamin and Daisy watch the Beatles on "Ed Sullivan" from their living room and, as discussed later, Benjamin has a refreshingly anonymous brush with war. In Gump, Vietnam took up a bulk of the film, and if placed in Benjamin's situations, Forrest would have accidentally blasted into space or accidentally kept an astronaut from going on a doomed mission, and would certainly have made a dim-witted reference to insects to inspire the Beatles' name. Even telling the story from Daisy's death bed via Benjamin's journal with Hurricane Katrina rapidly approaching (another of Longworth's thorns) is more of a tribute to New Orleans, the story's primary setting, than an arbitrary plot device. No other piece of the city's history is worthy to be symbolically linked to the end of Benjamin's (as filtered through Daisy's) life. Each was a titan in its own right, and the demise of both is notably tragic. When minute details begin to affect one's reviews, it's time for such critics to stop nit-picking and focus on why they love film in the first place.
Ironically, one of the more remarkable things about Benjamin is that he never does anything that remarkable in the sense of teetering on celebrity. Unlike Gump, he doesn't come across many famous people. Instead, they're mostly ordinary folk, many of whom are poor blue collar workers. When WWII hits, Benjamin accidentally becomes a part of the combat and is involved in only one major scene. Even there, the heroism is largely accidental and Benjamin is refreshingly quick to deflect chances to wax nostalgic (as opposed to Forrest's "Jenny and the sky" montage). With the exception of the lone rousing battle scene, all we see of Benjamin's time "in" the war is his affair with Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton), a clear indication that Fincher is concerned with the nuances of his characters and not merely CGI. Additionally, it is through Benjamin's first major interaction with someone outside of his New Orleans bubble that the film introduces its primary conflict: Benjamin's role in the world.
As such, the underlying piece of fascination is how Benjamin is able to stay below the social radar. His condition is one that the media (or the circus) would love to get a hold of, and yet he is able to live a somewhat normal life.
How is one who knows Benjamin supposed to act? Is his "curious case" one that should be shared or kept secret? Apparently, it's the latter. As it happens, Benjamin surrounds himself with a cluster of loyal friends who keep his secret (though he doesn't ask them to) and people who either die (the old folks' home residents, who give him ideal cover, and his tugboat employer, Captain Mike, played by Jared Harris) or who he never sees again (Elizabeth Abbott; Daisy's husband) and therefore cannot discover his secret. Most significant is Daisy. The secret is the center of her life, yet she keeps the truth from her daughter until she's on her death bed. That's dedication! Benjamin's general course of action is that he lives a fitting life in his current backwards age situation, lets it run its course, and then moves on so that he isn't discovered. His resulting inability to make many lasting relationships is as heartbreaking as his unusual demise.
There is a lack of strong sadness in the film, with the exception of the final, tearful few minutes, but therein lies one of the film's strongest pieces. Director Fincher, he of such dark fare as Se7en, Fight Club, and Zodiac, and, interestingly, sentimental target Roth (perhaps weaned off the sap by working on The Insider and Munich) are to thank for that. Growing up in the old folks' home, Benjamin becomes accustomed to death, and when it strikes his loved ones, he's able to not let it slow him down. In such scenes, Fincher and Roth keep the film from becoming overly sentimental by keeping the story moving and focusing on Benjamin and Daisy's relationship. In the sepia-tinged world that Fincher depicts, and through the honest, blunt statements Roth scripts for his characters, none such sappiness can endure. As a result of this dynamic team, Benjamin's situation is more than extraordinary to carry the film, and with equally superb performances and technology surrounding said story, the film cannot help but soar, even when it winds down.
As Benjamin's life nears its end, he embraces his isolation and travels the world with the body of a teenager and the soul of an old man. The montage of his treks to what appear to be India are visually and emotionally rich, and serves as the perfect preamble to his decay into dementia and death in an increasingly youthful vessel. In the above sequence, Benjamin completes his personal bucket list completely alone and without fanfare, and the "just-so" attitude with which he has conducted his life carries him and us through to his final chapter. It is as if both parties are coming to accept that precious little time is left, and yet for us (and Daisy), letting go is terribly difficult.
The resulting climactic feeling is so strong because we are emotionally invested in Benjamin throughout the film. The entire time, we know that Benjamin is going to die, and yet, like our own unavoidable death, we put off thinking about it until it's on top of us. Then, when it hits, it's stunning and beautiful.
Saying goodbye to Benjamin is the hardest thing to do this year in cinema, and one of the most difficult in the history of film. As a character, he is so magnetic that we cannot help but love him, just as Daisy and those who take the time to know him do. To accompany his story with visuals so appealing that they beg to be lived in, and to firmly trust in an auteur behind the camera, one in such complete control of a fragile story because he too loves film, is sublime. To experience The Curious Case of Benjamin Button over and over, with the same satisfying results, is simply a gift.