Finchers 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

[Episode29]

Was no one else bothered by the fact he had no emotion?!? wtf people , c'mon!!!

I was, and ultimately believe that it severly hurts the film. As a technical creation, Benjamin is a marvel, but as a lead character he's a blank slate. He has so little agency as to be baffling, making only two decisions on his own the whole freakin' movie, and seems more or less indifferent to his whole life and existence. The fact that he wrote that whole emotionally powerful diary is bizarre considering we see no sign of insight or perceptiveness from him. He's simply a dull man with little to say or think, who is surrounded by far more interesting characters who essentially pull him through life. What a bizarre notion for a lead character.

And as a romantic hero, he's lifeless. I've never seen Brad Pitt more comatose than when acting opposite the effortlessly brilliant Cate Blanchett. I would have far rather seen a film about her life, as she at least tried to be interesting, and acted as something other than a vehicle to connect random plot points to.

Oh, and those framework scenes at the hospital were really unfortunate, and upset the flow of the film pretty badly in the latter half.

By the way, I gave it a 6/10, which really surprises me. I truly thought this was going to be something special, and instead found it far less entertaining/intelligent/moving than Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire and Milk.

 

[K.B.]

Couldnt have said it better myself.

As for Cate, I didnt like her at all (though, for once, she looked smoking hot with that red hair) and thogut the love story was just stupid. So she falls for him whne no one esle would want her and he looks like smoking hot Brad Pitt? uhhh ok..can you say shallow?

And the line in the hospital when she sees him and says "Your perfect." pulls you right out of the flick. I was expecting Brad to turn to the camera and say "It's true. I am perfect. I really, really am."

Like I said before, al lthe people saying Brad did such a great acting job either have no idea of talent or are blind becuuse Queenie acted circles around everyone.

 

[The Senator]

While this was a beautiful film, I cannot help but feel that this is just a more whimsical retelling of Forrest Gump. I understand that there are a lot of differences between Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump; however, there were way too many similarities in the film for my comfort. Cate Blanchett's character mirrored Jenny; the tugboat captain mirrored Lieutenant Dan; Benjamin was involved in several historical coincidences; it was a frame story; the film was set in a Gulf state; many symbolic elements resembled each other; etc.

David Fincher did an excellent job directing the film. And the performances were pretty good. Moreover, it was a fascinating and beautiful picture. However, there were so many times where I was able to draw parallels between this and Forrest Gump that I felt the original nature of the story was completely overshadowed.

Maybe Eric Roth is just incapable of coming up with original material?

7.5/10 for me... there was so much potential lost due to Roth's stubbornness...

 

[Compi716]

I'm seeing this tomorrow, and look forward to it. My friends and I chose to see Gran Torino tonight instead (great decision - Clint is always a good choice).

One thing that honestly offends me about "Button," and this isn't even about the actual movie, is that critic Rex Reed is calling it one of the "Greatest Films Ever Made." Please.

 

[The Senator]

It is one of the most visually appealing films ever made... but it is far from the best film of the year, let alone best film of all time... which is actually interesting, since this is something critics said about Forrest Gump when it was released, yet hardly anyone I know thinks the movie is all that great anymore...

 

[alexdunn]

yet hardly anyone I know thinks the movie is all that great anymore...

Who are you hanging with?

 

[Episode29]

^^^^^
Well, he's sorta right.

Forrest Gump is viewed, by the majority of film scholars and critics as an engaging yet overblown trifle, and an unfortunate choice for Best Picture of its year, with its shmaltzy whimsy robbing the far more relevatory Pulp Fiction of the big prize.

However, in the eyes of the mainstream public....

To be sure, though, I would argue that Pulp Fiction (Not to mention Shawshank Redemption) has overshadowed Gump in the long run.

 

[cerealkiller182]

To be sure, though, I would argue that Pulp Fiction (Not to mention Shawshank Redemption) has overshadowed Gump in the long run.

I agree, but I still love Gump

I gave Ben Button a 7/10. The effects were amazing. The characters were rich and the performances were poignant. The movie was friggin long though and seemed to drag many times. I felt a few of the hospital scenes were a little unnecessary and the inclusion of Katrina to be a little tacky. The tug boat seems were the best in the flick.

 

[DarknessOfDeath]

Im seeing this today in two and a half hours.

 

[The Guard]

This is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

The movie takes a while to get into, but when you do, you almost forget the premise of it. That's how "right" the movie gets the human truths it delves into.

The pacing is fantastic. The cinematography is excellent. The film itself is shot beautifully, the effects are top notch, and the score is haunting. And the acting is great. And while the story is meandering, it does come full circle, and it contains some powerful stuff.

Brad Pitt gives one of the more subtle performances I've seen, and the end result is amazing. Cate Blanchett is amazing...everyone was very good, even the girl who played the younger Daisy, who is one of the better young actresses I've seen in a long time.

The movie is touching, funny, and often a little sad, but never overtly so. I know the movie got some flack for being "preachy", but I'm just not seeing it.

"Did you know I was struck by lightning seven times?" Comedy gold.

I rather liked the inclusion of Katrina. New Orleans functioned as a character all it's own, and the use of it and Katrina in context indicated that even places are fleeting. That was a nice touch.

To those who said Benjamin didn't have emotion...yes, he did, it was just very subtle most of the time.

And to those comparing this to FORREST GUMP...are there similar themes? Sure, to a point, because the movie follow's a man life, and because there are similar themes in life. But FORREST GUMP doesn't delve into the nature of mortality as BUTTON did, and I've seen few films do it this well. And there are some major differences. The stuff with Benjamin's father for instance, the ideas about age and mortality, and the overall seriousness of the approach.

Darn close to a 10/10.

 

[The Dude]

Glad to see all the positive reviews. Hopefully I'll be seeing this tomorrow.

 

[The Senator]

A friend of mine wrote an excellent review of the film. Naturally, he manages to sum up my opinions better than I ever could have written them:

Even though his films have varied greatly in quality, one thing I've always been able to count on from David Fincher is a film a little unlike any I'd ever seen before. Sixteen years ago, for his directorial debut, he turned the third installment in the Alien franchise into post-modern creep-show about isolation and contagion. It wasn't good, but Fincher's bizarre aesthetic and hip camerawork (self-taught from a career in music videos) almost made the film watchable. Where Alien 3 really faltered was in its screenplay, a problem that has tormented Fincher through much of his career. His directing is always spot on, but even a master of dark horror couldn't have turned David Koepp's screenplay for Panic Room into much more than a timid "there's someone in the house" movie. Fortunately, his success as a stylist has largely enabled him to choose whichever screenplays best suit his unique groove, but even the best directors occasionally elect to film a screenplay that's abysmally mediocre. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the best example in Fincher's career - even more so than Alien 3, which was largely dumped on him as a freshman initiation - and its blandness can best be summed up by the phrase that kept popping into my head every few minutes during the film: "This is exactly like Forrest Gump".

I have read both Winston Groom's novel Forrest Gump and F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and I have to admit that it took a lot of creative maneuvering on the part of screenwriter Eric Roth to turn both of them into nearly identical screenplays. The former was a tragicomic biography about a ******ed man becoming accidentally successful in a culture that doesn't value intelligence. The latter was a satire about society's perception of age told through the lens of a person born as a full grown old man and aging backwards to infanthood. Roth managed to turn both into whimsical fables about this big ol' unpredictable, ever-changing stream we call life - without ever really saying anything wise, insightful, controversial, or new, of course.

It's nearly impossible to overstate the similarities between the two films. Both are about boys born with disabilities to well-to-do white Southern families. Both films are told in a series of episodic flashbacks. Gump and Button are both raised in the absence of their fathers, and by mothers who are impossibly kind and faultless. They both fall in love as children with the one blonde girl who will prove to be the love of their life. They both meet and are friendly with poor black people, with the social problems of said blacks taking a backseat to the comic potential of a white man being in their midst. Through accident and circumstance, they both end up traveling the world and getting involved in important historical and cultural events. Their relationships with said blonde girls are on-again, off-again, resulting in a decades-long series of brief encounters ending with the girl being unnecessarily cruel and Gump or Button being unreasonably forgiving. The girls, conversely, live equally exciting lives, traveling the world as they pursue a career in performance art but ultimately failing due to health problems and realize that they find no happiness in their bohemian life styles without the down-home Southern boys they loved as children. Both relationships eventually culminate in marriage and a single child, but, due to reasons of illness, their marriages are short-lived, and the remaining parent is forced to care for their perfect child alone. Neither Gump nor Button ever seem to be particularly distressed about anything, and all the other characters are made out to be fools for not taking things in such stride. The moral at the end of the story is either "you never know what you're gonna get" or "you never know what's coming for you", depending on which version you're watching.

It's not just a simple matter of a few parallel themes and plot elements, though - dozens and dozens of individual formal techniques, scenes, characters, conversations, and recurring images are taken out of Forrest Gump and transplanted into The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Lt. Dan becomes Captain Mike. The Bubba-Gump shrimp boat becomes Captain Mike's tugboat, as well as Button's father's sailboat. The feather Gump sees flying around in the wind becomes a hummingbird out at sea. Lt. Dan's loss of his legs after a war injury becomes Daisy's crippled legs after a car accident, complete with scenes in foreign hospitals where the injured party sends Gump or Button away disdainfully. Infantry battles in Vietnam become naval battles in World War II, with the protagonist being the only one to come out unscathed. Gump's cross-country running becomes Button's travels on a motorcycle. Gump's influence on Watergate and the invention of the smiley face become Button's encounter with the oldest woman to swim the English channel and his mystical connection to Hurricane Katrina. The scenes where Button and Daisy finally live happily together could have easily been described as "we were like peas and carrots again." The famous "run, Forrest, run" scene becomes Button learning to walk as an elderly seven-year-old. Gump watching Jenny play guitar at the night club becomes Button watching Daisy dance at a concert hall. Gump going to the Black Panther meeting and then saying goodbye to Jenny as her boyfriend calls her onto a bus becomes Button going to a beatnik party and saying goodbye to Daisy as her boyfriend calls her to a cab. It just goes on and on and on.

There are differences, of course - Gump's duncehood versus Button's reverse aging being the most glaring example - but they're ultimately trivial and don't change any of the film's core messages. Fincher directs The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with far more flair, beauty, and fantasy than Robert Zemeckis did with Forrest Gump, and had Forrest Gump never existed, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could very well be called a good film - but it does, and it isn't. All the masterful technical filmmaking in the world can't cover up a corny, shallow, contrived story, and even less so one that's already been told before. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of the biggest cinematic disappointments in years.

 

[Bond]

This movie was ****ing great. I was gonna rate it 9/10... but I really can't think of anything I didn't like about it. So, 10/10.

 

[DarknessOfDeath]

In Brad's words: It was a masterpiece.

I saw it yesterday and I thought its the best film I've ever seen in my life. I have never been so deeply moved by a film like this one and I must say that the last hour really hit me.

Brad and Cate were phenomenal. There was just so much emotion throughout but the parts that really did it for me were when Ben and Daisy finally got to be together, only for a short while. Especially when Ben knew that he wouldn't be around to watch his daughter grow up. Okay. I think I'll stop there before I get all emo.

10/10 and I can't wait to own this masterpiece on dvd.

 

[Spider-Fan]

While I did love this movie, I don't think Brad Pitt should be getting Oscar buzz for it. The Button character himself wasn't the most interesting thing about the movie, and he lacked range in many ways. Plus, who knows how much real old acting Pitt does in the film. CGI does a lot of his work for him.

 

[The Guard]

A friend of mine wrote an excellent review of the film. Naturally, he manages to sum up my opinions better than I ever could have written them:

While there are similar themes, ideas, etc, your friend is really, really reaching for some of those similarities he's ticking off.

 

[Bond]

While I did love this movie, I don't think Brad Pitt should be getting Oscar buzz for it. The Button character himself wasn't the most interesting thing about the movie, and he lacked range in many ways. Plus, who knows how much real old acting Pitt does in the film. CGI does a lot of his work for him.

I agree, I liked Pitt in this, but it wasn't Oscar-worthy at all. Cate on the other hand, .

 

[The Dark Defender]

The best Fincher movie I've seen. I normally don't like Pitt but he's great here. A great story about fate and acceptance of circumstances with alot of heart. I highly doubt any of the Oscar bait this year (which are typically terrible films) will come close to this.

 

[Spider-Fan]

While this shares a lot of strutural similarities to Forrest Gump, central things are different that make these films unique in their own right. Forrest was an innocent in a world that was becoming less innocent all around him. This is what Forrest Gump was about. Benjamin Button is about life in general, and how it runs out on us all, and the need to come to terms with this natural event when you reach your end.

They have many similarities, I'm going to grant you guys. But, to say it is the same movie I think simplifies what both movies are about.

 

[Spider-Fan]

I agree, I liked Pitt in this, but it wasn't Oscar-worthy at all. Cate on the other hand, .

Cate was great in the film, I agree. I just don't think Brad Pitt deserve the Oscar hype he is getting for this movie, and I'm a person who loved the film.

 

[The Senator]

While this shares a lot of strutural similarities to Forrest Gump, central things are different that make these films unique in their own right. Forrest was an innocent in a world that was becoming less innocent all around him. This is what Forrest Gump was about. Benjamin Button is about life in general, and how it runs out on us all, and the need to come to terms with this natural event when you reach your end.

They have many similarities, I'm going to grant you guys. But, to say it is the same movie I think simplifies what both movies are about.

It isn't the same movie. No one is arguing that. They are both different in their overall premises. However, Eric Roth managed to take two completely different stories and come up with two screenplays which practically mirror each other. Forrest Gump may have been an innocent man in a less innocent world, but his outlook on life was shaped by his mother's now infamous line "life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get." And Benjamin Button? Yeah, his character dealt with life in general, but his outlook on life is shaped by his mother's forgettable yet vaguely familiar line, "you never know what's comin' for ya."

Never mind the numerous comparisons between characters, events, occurrences, etc. which make me question whether Eric Roth is actually capable of reading a story and not turning it into the same bland garden of mediocrity. The only thing which made this film different from Gump was Fincher's direction. But Eric Roth's basically plagiarized himself here.

 

[The Senator]

While there are similar themes, ideas, etc, your friend is really, really reaching for some of those similarities he's ticking off.

How so? Every single similarity he pointed out is relevant. And, when you consider Eric Roth-- who also wrote Forrest Gump-- is responsible for this film's screenplay, it makes his complaints all the more valid.

I drew several of these comparisons myself while sitting in the theater. While the characters and occurrences are not identical to one another, they are similar.

It proves that Eric Roth is incapable of taking substantive material and translating it into a substantive film.

 

[Spider-Fan]

It isn't the same movie. No one is arguing that. They are both different in their overall premises. However, Eric Roth managed to take two completely different stories and come up with two screenplays which practically mirror each other. Forrest Gump may have been an innocent man in a less innocent world, but his outlook on life was shaped by his mother's now infamous line "life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get." And Benjamin Button? Yeah, his character dealt with life in general, but his outlook on life is shaped by his mother's forgettable yet vaguely familiar line, "you never know what's comin' for ya."

Never mind the numerous comparisons between characters, events, occurrences, etc. which make me question whether Eric Roth is actually capable of reading a story and not turning it into the same bland garden of mediocrity. The only thing which made this film different from Gump was Fincher's direction. But Eric Roth's basically plagiarized himself here.

I agree with you that the film is very similar to Forrest Gump. However, I think the movie has enough of a premise spin to where I'm not bothered by it personally. However, I do think Tom Hanks earned his Best Actor Oscar for Forrest Gump, while if Pitt wins the award, I'd question the academy's decision.

 

[The Senator]

I agree with you that the film is very similar to Forrest Gump. However, I think the movie has enough of a premise spin to where I'm not bothered by it personally. However, I do think Tom Hanks earned his Best Actor Oscar for Forrest Gump, while if Pitt wins the award, I'd question the academy's decision.

I agree that Hanks gave an award-worthy performance; however, the film didn't even deserve to be nominated for Best Picture, let alone win it. I have a feeling the Academy will suffer the same sort of blindness this year, and will award a film which is a visual treat instead of rewarding a film of a substantive nature.

 

[alexdunn]

I agree with you that the film is very similar to Forrest Gump. However, I think the movie has enough of a premise spin to where I'm not bothered by it personally. However, I do think Tom Hanks earned his Best Actor Oscar for Forrest Gump, while if Pitt wins the award, I'd question the academy's decision.

He won't. It'll go to Mickey Rourke or Sean Penn I'm guessing.