The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (**3/4)

Curious is Benjamin (Brad Pitt) because Benjamin ages backward. Screenwriter Eric Roth (Munich, The Good Shepherd, Ali) and director David Fincher (Zodiac, Panic Room, Fight Club) borrow this idea—and almost nothing else—from the identically titled F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Whereas Fitzgerald’s “Curious” is just that, a curious trifle, the film tries to be two things: a philosophical work, told in flashback excerpts of an old woman’s diary, and a love story of longing and separation.

Benjamin is born in New Orleans at the end of the Great War. In a concession to physical reality, he is baby-size and unlearned, but with the face, and arthritis, of an old man. Taken in by a black caregiver (Taraji P. Henson) at a nursing home, he grows larger, but not, seemingly, older. (Despite this setting and time period, racial themes are not prominent.) Time marches on, but Benjamin only grows more vigorous. Partly isolated from others by his condition, he forms mostly brief relationships. Only with his (adoptive) mother and the granddaughter of one of the nursing home residents is there a longer-lasting bond. (Fincher manages to depict the friendship of the “old man” and the little girl without it seeming creepy.) Eventually, Benjamin leaves New Orleans on a tugboat.

Except for some sexual frankness, the movie feels old-fashioned and timeless, which may be appealing. It’s beautifully shot and scored (by Alexandre Desplat). The make-up effects combine with Pitt’s elegant performance to make you forget he’s a movie star, or that the plot is outlandish. (However, I never quite understood why Benjamin assumes that he’ll regress into childishness and lose his adult memories to match his appearance. Given the way he starts out, couldn’t he as easily just look childish? I suppose the answer is that that outcome would seem more comic than poignant, as indeed the reverse situation is in the beginning, but it bothered me just the same.)

Having noticed that screenwriter Roth also wrote Forrest Gump, I realize that the two movies have a lot in common, structurally. Although comedy was more prominent in Gump, both movies feature the life stories of their central characters, and romances in which the strangeness of the hero creates a challenge. Despite this, I liked Gump a lot better. For all of the loveliness of this one, I felt unconnected to the story, and two reasons suggest themselves. The first is that, notwithstanding Pitt’s performance, Benjamin is not that memorable a character. Gump annoyed some people, true, but Button won’t annoy anyone because his only major characteristics are a certain reserved politeness, and his love for the girl, played as an adult by Cate Blanchett. Which brings up the other reason I didn’t love the movie. Blanchett is another fine performer, and her role has more personality to it, but when we first see her, I could not connect this hard-edged ballet dancer to the sweet child first encountered. There is too much separation in time and in character. And so I remained unconvinced, or maybe just unmoved, by the placid man’s reawakened ardor. I actually found Benjamin’s other romance, with an unhappily married Englishwoman (Tilda Swinton), a more compelling storyline, but it’s a much smaller part of the movie.

I’m not saying there was no poignancy at all in the way these two people can love but not grow old together, or in the way that the movie reminds us of how our connections with other people make us human. But I preferred the warmer tone of Gump, where the female lead is in some way like Blanchett’s—hard, but in a way that makes it easier to see the tenderness within. In fact, a more recent movie, Slumdog Millionaire, tells a very similar romantic tale, wherein the hero tries to reconnect with his childhood friend, now a toughened-up young woman. There too, I rooted harder for the couple than here. This is clearly a well-crafted movie, and so I know some people are going to like it a lot. But in my case, it just seems like an overlong curiosity.

IMDB link

viewed 12/1/08 (screening at Ritz Bourse); reviewed 1/25/09

Copying Beethoven (**1/4)

? A young composition student (Diane Kruger) struggles to win over her sexist, cantankerous, nearly deaf boss (Ed Harris), who also happens to be the most celebrated composer in 1824 Vienna.

+ The scenes that shed light on the compositional process are the best. Fans of the 9^th Symphony and the Grosse Fuge, which figure heavily in the plot, will enjoy hearing those pieces.

- Considering that screenwriters Stephen Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson previously collaborated on Nixon and Ali, and that director Agnieszka Holland made the heart-rending Europa Europa, this is a surprisingly lightweight movie. Notwithstanding the period setting, it reminded me of nothing so much as Scent of a Woman. All you needed was Ed Harris saying “Hoo-hah!” As we already know from the opening sequence in which the great composer appears dying, the young lass will wear away the old man’s crusty exterior, and he will impart his wisdom, etc. There’s hardly anything else to the story. Minor characters (her boyfriend, his nephew) come and go, and then the movie just ends. Rather strangely, even though Kruger is German, she speaks with an American accent, one of the things that lessened the authenticity.

= **1/4 Harmless, fictional fluff. Despite my objections, it’s consistently pleasant. Watch it if you like seeing Ed Harris chew the scenery, but not to learn about Beethoven.

IMDb link

viewed at PFS screening