Be Excellent To Each Other

So, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button then.

It says it all in the title really, 'Curious Case'. Not 'The Gripping Case' nor 'The Devestating Case' but 'The Curious Case'. And alas, despite the film's strengths, a sense of curiosity is really the only emotion that wells up in the viewer. This isn't as bad as it sounds. There's a real graceful arc to the film, one that is almost tangible as the two curves intersect - of time flowing backwards and forwards in the bodies of people we find... well, curious. It's a stately film, that moves doggedly at a stately pace. In a sense it shares a lot with an altogether inferior film, Forest Gump, in that being removed from the protagonist as an observer, there's a gentle fateful element to every happenstance. Whilst this does conjure a dream like tale of magical realism, it unfortunately smothers any fierce emotion to be found. As the napalming of Gump's unit in friendly fire led to mild eyebrow raising, so the encounter with a U-Boat by Button aboard a wartime armed trawler leads to a murumring of "Crikey, that's a bit of a pickle."

It's a tradeoff however that is needless. Powell & Pressburger were among the chief champions of magical realism, of grand fateful tales of characters walking a set path surrounded by eccentrics and symbolism - and yet their people large and small always had a vitality about them, a beating heart that powered rage and love and sadism and charity and lust and reflection in their ultimately realistic - if faintly fairy-tale - heroes. Benjamin Button regretably has the same shrugged shoulders acceptance as Forest Gump, because we don't get to see his ever-internalised emotions. This is quite odd, as the film revolves around the reading of his diaries - surely there he must have poured his pain and his glee, all the sickness and all the heroism of the human heart? Well no, because we generally only get to see Button around others, and when we see him on his own it's with a quiet contemplation, an inner strength and wisdom. Fine stuff, but not for a central character. He never really feels human enough, despite some solid - and occassionally excellent - acting by Pitt. There isn't the unpredictability of human nature there. And that's a bit of a problem for a biopic. We get laughs from him, sure, but it never rises above whimsy - even when he's frequently visiting a brothel as a young adolescent of aged body.



"So you're a weird kind of old-young then, like Steve Martin?"

There are highlights. The opening with time's reversal is surprisingly powerful, showing an astonishing resurrection of American youth on the battlefield. The plot strand with the trawler captain is entertaining, and there's a winning ongoing silent-movie joke about being struck by lightning. More suprisingly, the birth of Button has a genuine menace and horror, and the baby is realistically repellent, a mewling, blotchy, saggy wrinkled monster straight from a Mervyn Peake or Edgar Allen Poe tale. The disquiet only slowly dispells as Button gets older - er, younger. If he'd have become more a of a real human being, the film would have accomplished something great in turning our revulsion to love. Best of all, Tilda Swinton once again proves that her body is the most incredible special effect in cinema. Ever unearthly, angelic and mesmerising, she dominates the screen nigh unconciously. As the unhappy wife of a British diplomat in Murmansk, she strikes up an affair with Button when his youthful vigour glows within a doddery frame of a sixty year old. Her mannerisms are exagerated and memorable, but never ludicrous. In her way she looks as out of place and as out of time as Button, and I actually found myself yearning for the plot to follow her further.

Somewhat fatally she ultimately proves a little more interesting than Cate Blanchett's love interest, Daisy. Daisy's character shows some spark, exhibiting the selfishness of youth - a selfishness that owing to the slow, quiet and reflective pace of Button's retirement home upbringing is alien to him. She's also got her chops at emulating a dancer, and she's always competent - holding the film together in the final act. But she never enthralls or makes us understand Button's devotion to her. Other character's come and go. Button's adoptive coloured family are mildly interesting but never really stray from the folksy wisdom spinners endemic in these films. Button's trawler captain friend does a good job with a fun role, and there's an excellent and quietly moving turn from Jason Flemyng as Thomas Button - who once again shows more fire and love than the main duo.

And how is Pitt? He's good. At points he's excellent, certainly opposite Tilda Swinton. It's an age that suits him the best, curiously, as a slightly bohemiam Southern Gentleman in a dressing gown, long straggly hair and a handsome if weathered face. It's at this age that he most convinces, and to me is at his most empathic. I don't think it's an Oscar winning turn, but it's a very good, solid, steady, consistent one. In a sense his performance reflects the film, assured, measured, steady, competent - but few high notes. And I can't work out if it is this direction and script that has constricted him, or just came about naturally.

The film looks good, effects are frequently astonishing and the production has that kind of dream-like glow found in these things. There are occassional breaks from logic and truth that irritate. Hurricane Katrina makes a debut and inexplicably covers six hundred miles of sea-space and floods lower ninth ward in the few hours the meta-narrative takes place, which is a bit odd since that really occured over two and a half days. There's a motif with an impossible hummingbird that's annoying, Benjamin should be miracle enough thank you, and it sort of breaks the film into shaggy-dog story by its inclusion. Murmansk is also oddly quiet in the film considering that historically the Germans were air-raiding it towards the end of Button's stay. The score I single out for damnation - with the lack of externalised emotion it seemed to feel that we needed to be told how we should be feeling, and did an unbearably showy plinky-plonky piano and strings dictation throughout. A more imaginative, varied and harsher score could have elevated the film.

In the end, the film had me thinking about age and fading away gracefully, accepting the limits of the body and the value of life. And that's a good thing. It didn't, however, make me give much of a tarnation for Button or Daisy - though I did empathise with the trawler captain and Tilda's trapped but strong Englishwoman abroad. In all, it was - well, curious. But never much more. Worth viewing once certainly, but having done so, it's a life you won't want to live again - forwards or backwards.

Four out of Five - First viewing.

Three out of Five - Subsequent viewings.

Good stuff, Pete.

Somethign has been exercising me about this since I heard about it - how exaclty does he get born as an old man then? Was his mum very stretchy? Or does he come out as a baby-sized old man, grow to adult size and then eventually shrink back to baby size?

The latter.

Baby sized old man - grows to adult - then de-ages from there to baby size again and death.

That's just silly.

Oddly enough it does work in the film.

Hmm, I actually thought it was very much inferior to Forrest Gump which is a long way from being one of my favourite films to begin with. Also this comparison video is pretty good:

http://www.scene-stealers.com/blogs/ben ... rest-gump/

I watched the first half hour or so and it didn't really grab me at all. So I went upstairs and read instead. Good review, though.

Also, after reading this sentence you'll be unable to think of it as anything other than "The Crinkly Crack of Benjamin's Buttocks."

You filthy pirate, unless you live upstairs from a cinema, in which case sorry.

Meh, someone else stuck it on. I wasn't all that bothered about it anyway, and given that I've been to the cinema once in the last three years, and bought only a Beadle's handful of DVDs in that time, the chances I'd ever have paid to see it are extremely slim.

Hah, Awesome!