A 'Curious Case' of An Uneven Script

by Brett Parker

I can name you countless movies that start off strong then fall apart at the seams. I’m having a hard time, though, thinking of movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which starts off very shaky then builds momentum towards wonderful cinema. As I watched the film’s first half, I asked: why the hell is this being considered for the Best Picture Oscar? By the time the second half rolled around, I thought: oh, THAT’S why! Like Benjamin Button’s life, things grow way more interesting towards the end.

The film is an elaborate fantasy fable centered on the remarkable life of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), a man who is born with the body of an elderly man and appears to age younger all the way to infancy when he is supposed to be in his elderly years. Abandoned by his father at birth, Benjamin is raised in a nursing home where his adolescent years resemble that of a geriatric’s life. As his body grows younger, Benjamin decides to go off into the world and experience life. His adventures include working on a New Orleans tugboat, having an affair with a British man’s wife (Tilda Swinton), and fighting naval battles in World War II. As the years progress, Benjamin goes from looking like an 80-year-old to that of a 50-year-old.

The plot begins to grow heart-wrenching once Benjamin sets his affections on Daisy (Cate Blanchett), a beautiful ballet dancer. Daisy was a childhood friend of Benjamin’s and has grown into his object of desire. Yet while Daisy is an embodiment of youth and energy, Benjamin’s middle-aged body holds him back from being the kind of man Daisy wants. It’s only when they both hit 40 that they could somewhat resemble a normal couple. Benjamin and Daisy grow deeply in love but wonder if they could truly have a healthy relationship. If Daisy is aging towards an elderly woman while Benjamin is heading for a toddler’s body, could they really create a strong family?

The first half of the film seems focused on peculiar aspects of Benjamin’s life yet strangely isn’t as focused on the details of Benjamin’s condition. We learn the everyday aspects of Benjamin’s nursing home life and witness his adventures on a tugboat, all while feeling shortchanged on what it feels like to be such a person with such a condition. To be fair, the earlier sections of the film fit in nicely with the overall plot and help to build Benjamin’s personality and views on mortality. I just don’t think an affair with an English woman or life on a tugboat is the cleverest way to develop Benjamin’s personality. The film is based on the brilliant short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who knew how to paint an observant picture of a backwards-aging man in everyday society. Fitzgerald had stronger and deeper ideas for episodes in Benjamin’s life, including Benjamin looking like the oldest student in college, harboring guilt over looking older than his father, and having Benjamin’s son being embarrassed by the fact that his father turns out to look younger than him. These low-key observations in the short story told us many things we wished to know about Benjamin while we feel the earlier passages in the film are evading bigger issues at hand.

The film clocks in at just about three hours, so we feel a lot of the earlier scenes can go right in the garbage. Especially since we realize the real magic lies in the second half of the film, right when the grown-up Daisy enters the picture. The film’s central romance brings the deeper complexities of Benjamin’s life into the forefront, especially his yearnings and sadness. There’s a great scene where Benjamin attends a party with Daisy and her Ballet friends. They are all in their twenties yet Benjamin’s body is in his fifties. Everyone at the party is drinking, dancing, and living it up, while Benjamin feels too much like an old man to join in. The wounded look in Benjamin’s eyes speaks oceans. Indeed, it’s through the film’s observations of Benjamin and Daisy’s relationship in which we get the emotional answers we’ve been seeking all along.

A character like Benjamin Button seems like the perfect opportunity for an actor to go over-the-top with eccentricities, yet Brad Pitt wisely keeps his portrayal subtle and withdrawn. Benjamin may not be the most colorful character, but it makes sense the more you think about it that someone like him would probably be shy, reserved, and not wanting to draw attention. Pitt skillfully brings Benjamin to convincing life and I was even amused by how his youthful looks embody vintage Americana ala the young Robert Redford. Of course Cate Blanchett is wonderful as usual, hitting all the emotional bases and cinematically aging with grace (although I couldn’t understand a word she was saying during her modern-day hospital scenes. I expected Benjamin and Daisy’s romance to somewhat resemble a typical fairy tale romance and I was delighted to find out how flawed and human the filmmakers allow it to be. Daisy is more feisty and frustrated than we expect and Benjamin isn’t exactly a smooth charmer.

If I say that Brad Pitt convincingly plays a man who ages from 80 to his teens, then credit must also be given to the dazzling special effects that help accomplish this feat. Wonderful CGI and make-up effects are used to convey Benjamin’s physical transformations throughout the ages and I can’t remember the last time big-screen special effects were so breathtaking. I was truly marveled by the image of an elderly-looking Benjamin trying desperately to peak out a window or when Benjamin’s body arrives in its late-teens. Come to think of it, the whole movie itself is filled with marvelous images. Director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) has always been an imaginative storyteller, but he has reached new and supreme heights of creativity. He has crafted a film overflowing with brilliant creative moments, such as a blind man creating a backwards-moving clock, Benjamin engaged in a battle with a Nazi U-Boat, and a meticulous explanation of all the little things that caused Daisy to be involved in a car accident. Visually, this is truly a triumph for Fincher.

By creating a character who defies the natural flow of human existence, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button becomes a meditation on existence and its relationship to time. No matter who we are or what we are capable of, we are all slaves to time and cannot escape its inevitable flow, even if we are experiencing it backwards. All we can do is try our very best to enjoy our period of existence and soak up all the experience we can get. Yet with Benjamin Button, we ponder a thought that F. Scott Fitzgerald attributed to Mark Twain: it’s funny how we experience the best part of life at the beginning and the worst part at the end. What if they were reversed? This film allows us to judge if that would be for better or for worse.

I’ve praised so much about this film that I almost make it sound like a great movie, and it almost is. It just seriously needs a stronger first half that holds up against the rest of the film. As good as it is, this film still could’ve been more imaginative, focused, and tighter. Fitzgerald’s source material is proof of that. The author himself once said “there are no second acts in American lives.” It’s ironical then that the second act of an American life he helped create outshines the other ones.