The Curious Case of Sweeping Hollywood Epics

INARTICULATE RAMBLINGS AND INCOMPLETE THOUGHTS ON BENJAMIN BUTTON BELOW WITH SPOILERS


I managed to escape the house on Christmas evening for a few hours to rid myself of the petty grievances of family gatherings that can pull you under and fled to my one true sanctuary. I saw Benjamin Button in Berkeley among an impressively full crowd of delicious hipsters at an expensive (10 dollars for a small popcorn and soda!) Art House theatre. The audience was my favorite part of the movie.

In the context of big sweeping Hollywood epics, which to my surprise it is, I guess you could call it a step in the right direction. I had been under the impression it was going to be a platform release and modestly budgeted allowing for David Fincher to continue his detail obsessed "quirky" cinema practices last found in Zodiac. Within the first ten minutes I knew it was swinging for the fences in a big way, hoping for a Forrest Gump like grand slam (same screenwriter), begging the audience to connect by dumping millions of dollars into every minute and creating many broad affable characters who speak in clumsy aphorisms.

The producers better hope for those kind of numbers. After a little research I find this thing cost upwards of 150 million and was financed by both Paramount and Warner Brothers. If you asked me a month ago based off trailers and buzz release, I would have said, it will prob do 35-50 million if its lucky. It’s a lock for 100 easily after Xmas box office figures are released despite a nearly 3 hour running time and a surprisingly amount of needless pessimism that comes across callow/juvenile.

Two recurring themes are death and storms. Both seem to constantly be happening on screen. One would THINK a movie about aging backwards, especially if you’re blessed with Brad Pitt’s face and an inheritance that allows you to not work ¾ of your life would have a little bit more fun. But no, Fun is for suckers and films that do respectable business but don’t earn the OSCARS, which this wants to do, desperately. To my bafflement it very well may do both.
Brad Pitt’s Benjamin Button is possibly the most enigmatic and non entity main character since Carol White from SAFE (praise be to the BEST movie of ALL TIME). But instead of using a blank canvas/sleepwalker to make subversive sociopolitical statements we are supposed to connect to him and understand him. How you ask? I don’t really know, a few possible theories; dump our emotional baggage onto him, we do the heavy lifting for such a pretty face. Or maybe some find charm in his listlessness as it is common knowledge that blank stares and mental vacancy are cute.

His characters towards the end does something ABSOLUTELY selfish and reprehensible abandoning both his wife and child because of his concerns about the baby having him as a father (I'll be different than other papas!) and his wife eventually having to take care of him. That he expresses these sentiments several times during her pregnancy to which she talks him down and out of it make his leaving all the more baffling and he does nothing to earn back her or our forgiveness. The film turns into an unofficial anthem for dead beat dads EVERYWHERE. Luckily there is a scene with Cate Blanchett whose acting saves this erratic and poorly written contrivance with a simple, “You’re so young” and suddenly we completely understand why it would never work and why he did what he did.
The film decides to “go there” and stupidly starts on the eve of Hurricane Katrina. By doing so, it politicizes the film from the get go, we can’t help but think of a certain ineffectual president, an incoming one and an underbelly of classism/racism so long ignored and shockingly exposed for everyone to see. This makes the sanitized and completely false historical flashbacks back indefensible. You can’t help but think WTF as we’re immediately introduced to Queenie the stereotypical black mammy figure who raises little Ben throughout the entire movie. Yes, a black woman who is a maid/caretaker at a convalescent home raising a prematurely aged white child in the deep south during the 30’s without a single character every commenting or addressing the issue. Not only that but she literally sleeps in a dank basement bedroom her ENTIRE LIFE. Even when Ben comes into money via a rich deadbeat father (recurring theme), what does he do? He goes to cavort in the Florida Keys with Daisy, while mama dies back at home. Her daughter drops out of the film somewhere along the line and her husband, a charmed happy smiling Shakespeare quoting gent died conveniently 10 minutes previously while Ben was off seeing the world. Characters who solely exist to please/accommodate ole' Ben. But don't worry there's a fun black church scene.
There is a brief interlude in which Benjamin meets an elderly upper class British woman played by Tilda Swinton that is charming and touching allowing for subtle psychological complexity and is one of the few times the movie has fun with the premise of aging backwards. He sees her as a mother figure or a potentially aged Daisy (the red hair) and she picks up on this and willingly complies, bossing him around and educating him on the ways of the world, through the taste of caviar and other ahem acquired tastes. That he is inexperienced and having his first bout of puppy love while looking 60 is part of the charm.
Cate Blanchett gives a solid performance as Daisy and tries her hardest to convince the audience of why she loves him but its just not there. There is no reason why she (or we) should love him.
It has a few interesting touches now and then. The simple fact that Ben has sex (losing his V in a whore house no less) with many different woman pretty constantly throughout the film feels revolutionary. Somewhere along the line it seems most characters in mainstream Hollywood flicks stopped doing it, too busy shopping or committing violent acts. And while she is the love of his life, and vice versa, they both take lovers on during various stages and don’t regret it or hold it against each other. Also, Daisy most likely dyked out and is pretty sex positive in her attitudes during an interesting conversation she has with him in an empty veranda wearing a sexy maroon number. No blushing flower is Miss Daisy.
In the end we are treated to a literal image of Time’s tide
I guess in other director’s hands this would be cavity inducing but thanks to Fincher’s sociopathic film techniques it goes down with a bit less indigestion.