bizarro button
David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is the front runner at this year’s Academy Awards with 13 nominations, the same number garnered by “Forrest Gump,” a film to which it bears many similarities, not least its screenwriter Eric Roth.
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Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is born with all the characteristics of an 85-year-old man — arthritis, blindness, wrinkled skin — and is abandoned by his father on the steps of an old people’s home in New Orleans. Originally thought unlikely to survive, Button grows younger and stronger each day, watching those he loves grow old and die while he “ages” towards infancy. At middle-age he falls in love with his old friend Daisy (Cate Blanchett), but the pair realizes that his condition renders their future together impossible. Like Forrest Gump, Pitt’s Button has a unique experience of history; is fixated on a single, unattainable woman from his childhood; and even has a similar, slow-witted southern drawl. But whereas Hanks’ character was supposed to be mentally challenged, Pitt’s Button just comes across as charmless — besides his bizarro-aging there is nothing wrong with him, so there’s no need for him to be so bland and impassive. And whereas the love story between the naive Gump and the dangerous Jenny was believable, here we wonder what Ben and Daisy could possibly see in each other. The film meanders — and at 166 minutes it does meander — towards its conclusion, framed by the tired device of having a dying Daisy reveal their affair to her daughter on her deathbed. Besides perhaps for Best Visual Effects for the impressive CGI and makeup work done on Pitt for each stage of his life, you wonder which awards the film will share with “Forrest Gump” too. If the Academy has any sense, Best Picture won’t be one of them. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” hits cinemas on Feb. 5. |
