Unlike most films, especially the recent ones, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one that is simple to summarise but difficult to describe. Movie buffs, David Fincher fans and Brad Pitt fan(atic)s will have already scoured the net and read up on this movie, so if you don’t already know what the film is about, I’ll save you the trouble… it’s about a man who is born old and ages backwards. There. I don’t think any of the Oscar contenders this year can be summed up with such extreme brevity. Yet, it makes you curious and you wish to find out more. And you watch the film. And you think. And you think some more. And like the Naughty Boy in Keats’ poem of the same name, you stand in your shoes and you wonder. You see, beneath the facade of brevity, lie ideas and themes which are so deep, they can submerge you in a deluge of poignant questions, if you happen to be in a bit of a pensive mood.
The basic idea is simple yet terrifically ambitious. It grapples the questions of life, death, youth, beauty, innocence, aging, love and responsibility and it does so with stunning simplicity. Apart from all of that, the film explores the strength of relationships in the most dubious of circumstances, and so it begins, aptly in my opinion, with a dying mother and a grieving daughter. In her mother’s (Cate Blanchett) final moments, the daughter (Julia Ormond) wants to connect with her in a way that will be a fitting final farewell. Daisy, the mother, tells her daughter, Caroline, a story of a man named Gateau, who is blind and yet a master clockmaker. He is commissioned to make a clock to be hung in the New Orleans Railway Station. His son leaves to fight in the First World War and while Gateau is still working on the clock, he receives news of his son’s death. Overcome by grief, he finishes the clock, but designs it to run backwards. This initial story is seemingly irrelevant to the main plot, but it sets the tone of the film and lays down a simplified version of the various motifs contained in it.
Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is born, his mother dies in childbirth and his father, horrified by his son’s strange appearance, abandons him on the doorstep of an old age home. The baby is discovered by the caretaker Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a black woman with a heart of gold, who adopts him as her own, even though he shows all the signs of old age and seems to be on the brink of death. Benjamin grows up surrounded by old people, people who are like him physically, but nearer to death. As he grows younger, he is often confronted with death and he learns to accept it as a sad truth that he must accept. The film follows his life and shows him mature as he travels and discovers new things and falls in love. Time is a tool that has been used in an expert fashion by David Fincher. The film is long by the standards of the usual Hollywood fare, but the story is carefully constructed and at no point will the viewer feel bored. It flows effortlessly through the ages, from the ‘20s to the Second World War to the Swingin’ Sixties and on to the present day, so effortlessly, in fact that one barely seems to notice.
The sets are fabulous, grand, intricate to the last detail and well in keeping with the period they represent. And, of course, the film is a marvellous showcase of the wonders of modern special effects and make up magic. The transformation of Brad Pitt from a shrivelled-up old youngster to a dapper middle aged gentleman to a youthful adolescent septuagenarian is unbelievably realistic. One would expect that it is easier to make someone look old rather than young, but take a look at Pitt in the final third of the movie and you will be forced to wonder whether the footage had been shot 10 years ago.
The characters have been portrayed beautifully in the film. The actors have done a good job. Brad Pitt’s performance is commendable, in the face of such a challenging role. Some might find him a bit, bland and lukewarm, but I felt that is what the character demanded; Benjamin isn’t emotional or sentimental, he is eager, innocent, honest and hungry to discover the world. Cate Blanchett is easily one of my favourite actors in the industry, and though this film may not be her shining moment, she definitely delivers a strong performance as the fiercely independent love interest of Benjamin. The film, of course is based on the short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but takes large departures from the rather playful jaunt that is the original. I have a sneaking suspicion that Blanchett’s character has been named Daisy after Jay Gatsby’s love interest in The Great Gatsby, which is a little unfair, because this Daisy is nothing like that one. Queenie is perhaps the third most important character in the film and Taraji P. Henson’s performance as Benjamin’s self-sacrificing, selfless, loving foster mother is perhaps the most endearing of all. The other characters have small parts and have been played very competently, but this is a film which is larger than the any of the characters.
What I liked most about this film is that it refuses to buy into the industry’s formulaic credo and sticks to the basic job of telling a simple story simply. It is stripped down and stark and devoid of any kind of gratuitous overindulgence and needless, soppy sentimentality. I cannot overstate how much I appreciate this, given that this film is a potential goldmine for people who like to make melodramatic, mega-weepy tear-jerkers as well as those who insist on shoving an all-important moralistic message into your digestive tract from either side. Benjamin romances a married woman, young Daisy is flippantly bohemian and old Daisy cheats on her husband and all this is done unapologetically. And a film that could have easily milked the death card till the audience were blue in the face, is thankfully more focussed on life. Thank god, David Fincher took up the project.
Apart from being the personal journey of the main character through his life, this is an inspiring tale of self-discovery, maturing, learning and loving. It is a celebration of life, because it shows that life is worth living no matter how dire, strange or ‘curious’ the situation is. But now I sound like those errant message-shovers that I loathe! Messages aside then, this film is an epic tale which explores the dialectics of youth and aging and in a broader sense, life and death. But there is also another thesis-antithesis mechanism here, and that is the struggle between love and doing the right thing and the choices this creates. Ultimately, this is a love story placed in extraordinary circumstances. If a year ago, someone had told me that David Fincher, maker of films like Fight Club, Seven, Zodiac, The Game and Alien 3, was making an epic love story, I would have laughed in his/her face. Having seen this film, I’ll have my popcorn ready even if his next film is a 2-hour Teletubbies extravaganza.
Photo Courtesy: www.channel4.com
- YoricK
