I first saw the film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, on Christmas Day of 2008. I remember that my roommate and her family wanted me to go with them to the movies on that day, whereas I wanted to stay home and write. When we arrived at the casino where Benjamin Button was playing, I quickly noticed how crowded the whole place was. I don't like crowds and have a difficult being around too many people. It seemed as if everyone in Las Vegas had the same idea as my roommate and her family. Everyone wanted to get out on Christmas Day. Anyway, we finally got inside the theater and ended up having to sit on the very first row in the dark place and then strain our necks upward at a painful angle to watch the film. At that moment I hated the entire situation and knew I wasn’t going to enjoy the movie. Two-and-a-half hours later, I was the only one still crying as we walked out of the movie theater. No one else seemed as moved as I did by this poignant epic of two people in love, shown against the backdrop of 20th Century American…a love story of two individuals who finally meet in the middle as one grows older and the other grows younger.
It was then I realized that the whole experience was meant for me to see this exceptional movie and to be swept away emotionally by it. Why? I have no idea, but against all odds, I saw a film that struck me to the very core of my being and moved me to tears...a lot of tears. Only several movies have been able to do that to me over the last fifty years, and I can count them on both hands.
Well, I finally watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button again last night on DVD and was once again swept up in the magical journey of a man who ages backwards. I also found myself crying again at the end, but this time I was prepared with a box of Kleenexes on the coffee table.
For those who don’t know anything about the film, the final shooting script was written by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and a previous screenplay adaptation by Robin Swicord. The movie was directed by David Fincher, who also did Seven, The Game, The Fight Club, Panic Room, and Zodiac. Starring in the film are Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, Taraji P. Henson, Jason Flemyng, Jared Harris, Tilda Swinton, and a number of others extremely talented actors. This seems to have “winner” written all over it, but to be honest, the storyline kind of sucks when you first hear it.
At the end of World War I in 1918, a baby is born to a well-to-do family in New Orleans. The mother dies after the birth of the unusual bady. The father, once he sees the child, can only think of drowning it. The reason for this is because the baby looks and has all the physical symptons of someone in their late eighties. Though the father, Thomas Button as played by Jason Flemyng, starts out with the intention of throwing the new-born into the Mississippi River, he ends up leaving it on the steps of an old-folk’s home.
Fortunately, the baby is taken in by one of the ladies who work there—Queenie as played by the terrific actress, Taraji P. Henson. She names the child, Benjamin, and keeps him as her own. In time the child grows into a six-year-old, looking for the most part like a tiny eighty-year-old codger, or like the rest of the people living in the retirement home. Soon, Benjamin meets young Daisy there, who’s visiting her grandmother. He loves her at first sight, but it won’t be until they eventually reach the same age (one going forward and the other going backwards in time) that they’re able to be together for any period. And, this is when the agony of the film starts taking place because no matter how much they love each other, time has a way of enveloping everyone within its own cruel intentions, and you can only flow along with the current. This isn’t by any means the end of the movie. There’s much more to tell, and it’s a real tear-jerker. At least for me it was. Also, what I’ve covered is only a drop in the ocean compared to what’s actually in the film. Remember, it’s over two-and-a-half hours in length, though it didn’t seem that long to me.
As I mentioned earlier, this was a movie I didn’t expect to like. Everything was going against it that late Christmas morning. I think it says something for David Fincher as a director, the talent of the entire cast, the special effects’ people, the soundtrack composer (Alexandre Desplat), and all the other members of the crew who worked so hard to put this film together and to make it work as a story. Any movie that’s able to grab my heart under the given circumstances is a true winner in my opinion. It literally made me forget the pain in my neck for nearly three hours. Lord, I’ve seen so many movies over the last five decades that it’s difficult to catch me unexpectedly anymore, but this film did. I didn’t know I would honestly begin to care about Benjamin Button, Daisy, Ms. Queenie, Benjamin’s father, and Captain Mike, but I certainly did.
I also found myself laughing whenever the character from the retirement home who had been struck by lightning several times and would appear throughout the movie to tell Benjamin about one of his experiences, then the film would show the man standing by a fence with a smile on his face, or walking his dog down a country road, or mending the roof when lightning would suddenly come from out of nowhere and knock him to the ground. The fact that he got struck by lightning wasn’t amusing, but the way it was portrayed caused me to laugh out loud. That was definitely the director’s intention. This man would appear at a somber moment in the film and then have the audience laughing at something bizarre. The important message here, however, is that we never know what’s charging toward us in life, until it finally hits us squarely in the chest. A chain of minute circumstances can change our live forever, but then again, maybe it was destiny or fate that was at play in these situations, and nothing could have changed what eventually happened.
The DVD is loaded with over three hours of Behind-the-Scenes material on the making of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Even knowing how the Special Effects people did everything still leaves me with my mouth hanging open in awe. They deserved to win an Academy Award for what they were able to accomplish. Of course, I feel as if Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and Taraji P. Henson also deserved Oscars for their performances in this film. I personally think that Brad gave the performance of his career in this movie, and that he moved from being a really good actor to a great actor.
Something I didn’t know was that David Fincher was offered this film early in his career, during the early nineties. He wanted the make the film, but couldn’t figure out how to do the special effects. It took another ten years for film technology to catch up so that when he was given a second shot at it, the way was clear to him. Another thing that surprised me was that the original writer of the first script was Robin Swicord, and during the course of ten years, revised that long sucker seven different times. This was before Eric Roth stepped in to see what he could do with it. The original shooting script was around 240 pages long, and the studio forced David Fincher to cut it down by at least forty pages. Anybody who has ever worked on a screenplay before can understand the amount of work that went into the fianl script for Benjamin Button.
Last, the location of the shoot was changed from Baltimore to New Orleans because of the budget. Then, Katrina hit and devastated this Southern city. The city officials begged the producers not to change locations and offered to work with them in any way possible to make the film happen. David Fincher decided to stay in New Orleans, and this proved to be a wise decision because the city, in its own way, becomes a secondary character in the movie.
If you’re never seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, then I urge you to do so. This is a beautifully crafted film that tells a very unusual story, but in the end, it’s still a love story between two people who know time is against them. Highly recommended to those who are romantics at heart!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment