Retro Film Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Of all the Oscar-winning films of late 20th Century, none is as reviled as Forrest Gump. The main reason for it is that film snobs can’t forgive it for depriving Pulp Fiction – a far superior film – of it well-deserved award. More than a decade later, there were reasons for concern that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – a work that could easily be dubbed Forrest Gump 2.0 – will inflict a similar injustice to films more deserving of Academy Award. However, even more intriguing are the comparisons between Button and Gump,which can lead to conclusion that, while Gump perhaps did not deserve an Oscar', Button deserved it even less, given that it was a far inferior work reflecting the aimlessness, bloodlessness, and risk-averse nature of 21st Century Hollywood.

Like Gump, 'Button' uses a literary work as its source, in this case, a 1922 short story by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, an author best known as the chronicler of the Roaring Twenties. The plot of the story follows the life of Benjamin Button, a Baltimore aristocrat who is born in the body of a frail, aged man and gradually becomes younger over time, ultimately dying as a baby after about sixty years.

When the idea of adapting this story into a film landed on the desks of Paramount's executives, it is not hard to imagine words like “makeup”, “special effects!, “young actor playing an old man”, and “old man playing a child” being mentioned, along with the most important word of all – 'Oscar'. Then someone probably uttered words fatal for this film - “Forrest Gump”.

Thus, the decision was made to transform 25 pages of Fitzgerald's story into a two-and-a-half-hours of epic film that would combine nostalgia and sentimentally to comment on the 20th century through the 80-year lifespan of its protagonist. Veteran screenwriter Eric Roth was hired, Brad Pitt was cast in the lead role, and direction was entrusted to David Fincher. To fully apply the formula of Gump, the setting was placed in New Orleans to give the film a undeniably Southern and exotic flair.

The film begins on the eve of Hurrican Katrina in a hospital where 80-year-old Daisy Fuller (played by Cate Blanchett), on her deathbed, asks her middle-aged daughter to read diary of Benjamin Button', a man who was the love of her life. Through flashbacks, the narrative shifts to New Orleans on 1918 Armistice Day when factory owner Thomas Button (played by Jason Flemyng) can’t come to terms with having fathered a shrivelled, wrinkled creature and decides to leave him at an old age home. There, he will be cared for by black nurse Queenie (played by Taraji P. Henson), who grows fond of the baby everyone predicts will die soon; instead, Button begins to grow stronger, more agile, and healthier.

From the outset, it is evident that screenwriter Roth was aware of inevitable comparisons with Gump, so he sought to make it clear that this is an entirely different film or tried to prevent this work from being accused of celebrating an ideology that brought George W. Bush to the White House. Thus, the plot is framed by Hurricane Katrina – the darkest chapter of Bush's presidency. Roth then attempts to provide some sort of “magical” explanation for Button's phenomenon. This comes in the form of a blind clockmaker (played by Elias Koteas) who, affected by his son's death in World War I trenches, builds a large clock that runs backward. With this pacifist message, very relevant during the ongoing carnage of Iraq War, Roth apparently aimed to convince the liberal-left Academy voters that he was on their side.

However, all these tricks will not prevent viewers familiar with Gump from experiencing déjà vu while watching ‘Button’, realising it is nothing but a shameless copy of the original. Not only does stoic Button represent an equivalent to stoic Gump, but Daisy also serves as an equivalent to Jenny as “eternal love”, and there’s even room for Captain Mike (played by Jared Harris) as an equivalent to Lieutenant Dan; both characters are involved in maritime adventures. Gump's war episode in Vietnam finds its Button equivalent in the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II.

Button, unfortunately, is not just shameless but also rather soulless and structurally problematic compared to its original. Unlike Gump, which had a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and some coherent – whether conservative or Taoist – stance, script for Button is nothing more than an excuse for indulging in special effects laced with sentimentality and mostly poor acting. Unlike Hanks, who managed to create sympathy for his limited character in Gump, Pitt has resigned himself to let CGI do most of his work; thus his character is portrayed with so little enthusiasm that viewers would not care if Button were played by him or Keanu Reeves. His character undergoes no catharsis or awakening but simply stoically pushes forward (or backward) while much more interesting personalities around him perish.

This may be most evident in the last third of the film when the main subplot – Button's love affair with Daisy – resolves itself predictably. Unlike Fitzgerald, who realistically depicted the relationship between an increasingly younger man and an increasingly older woman in his original story, Roth inserts an unconvincing explanation for why Button will leave his true love – because he realised he cannot be a good father as a teenager.

Fincher, a director better suited for dark stories about neurotics, psychopaths, and serial killers than for sentimental romance, utilises creative resources such as top-notch cinematography and music; however, the entire film feels cold in a Kubrickian way, yet devoid of any meaning. An additional problem lies in sequences and subplots forcibly added merely to give the film epic character and worse still – epic length. This is particularly true regarding Button’s adventures in Murmansk – an episode whose historical inaccuracies will make many WW2 buffs uncomfortable.

While viewers may occasionally be impressed by beautiful images and sounds, those who endure more than two and a half hours of Benjamin Button will ultimately wish they could turn back time."

RATING: 3/10 (+)

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