Button Hole
“BENJAMIN BUTTON? BENJAMIN BORING BASTARD more like!”
That was my reaction at the end of David Fincher’s elderly-baby-based arse marathon THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, the first Fincher film I’ve been furiously indifferent to. Does anybody want a run-down on what’s wrong with this movie? Can we be bothered?
It strikes me that the FORREST GUMP writer, in blatantly trying to emulate his earlier hit, has tried to avoid the controversy that greeted GUMP by removing all the elements some people didn’t like — the creepy political conservatism, the cheap exploitation of AIDS as a story device, the dumbness of the hero. So in BB it’s not clear what, if any, political views are being aired, which is strange in a story that takes in two world wars, the sexual revolution, several trips to the Soviet Union, and Hurricane Katrina. He’s also removed just about all the whimsy and fantasy and intersection with real historical figures, which didn’t work for me last time but at least staved off total tedium. We all know that awfulness is preferable to nothingness, which is why we put up with LIFE — and that little bit of pseudo-insight is at least as deep as anything in Eric Roth’s interminably uneventful screenplay which, placed under a microscope, would surely turn out to be composed of millions of little greetings cards.
I got deja vu from watching a older-than-he-looks Brad Pitt moping about New Orleans (INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE) and from watching a dull, simple, naive Brad Pitt being boring for three hours (MEET JOE BLACK) and from seeing the ’50s evoked by a character getting on a motorcycle (INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL). I got deja vu from seeing dance filmed and cut with brutish insensitivity (just about everything in the US mainstream for the past thirty years).
All that kept me watching was the vain hope for a spectacular and grotesque conclusion. I thought, “Okay, at first he had the tininess of a baby coupled with the creaky wrinkliness of an old man. So at the end he’ll have the girth of an old man coupled with the bouncy pinkness of a baby. Brad Pitt will basically become a giant, 5′ 11 baby, toddling around like a hydrocephalic sumo wrestler, smashing through walls and trying to rip Cate Blanchett’s head off, like the monster does to Jane Seymour in FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY.” Something that it might actually be worth waiting 166 bloody minutes to see.
Spoiler alert: that doesn’t happen.
shadowplay 
February 8, 2009 at 6:14 am
My guess is that you didn’t much care for this Button film. I had no real intention of seeing it anyway, but thanks for sacrificing 166 minutes of your life so I won’t have to. I’ve seen the trailer, that was enough for me. What I really want to do is watch Fight Club again, some truly inspired weirdness there.
February 8, 2009 at 7:15 am
Guy, I enjoyed Fight Club when I saw it at the cinema. Two other weird but very enjoyable films are Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and Fleder’s Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead.
February 8, 2009 at 11:34 am
Ghost Dog didn’t quite do it for me. Too many borrowings, and the stylistic problem of Jarmusch not wanting to be Jarmusch anymore but not being able to fully leave behind his flat, uninflected style. But it was the last JJ film I enjoyed at all.
A shame that both the writer and director of TTDIDWYD have gone totally mainstream, that was a nice movie. Their subsequent credits get more and more depressing.
There might be a whole post in dissecting the erronious idea that Fincher, a notorious cynic and clever-dick, was somehow going to disarm the sentimentality of Button. In reality, he’s stranded in an alien world, and all he can do is concentrate on the visuals and technique (which are very pretty).
February 8, 2009 at 12:24 pm
My favourite Jarmusch films are Ghost Dog and Night on Earth. I also liked some of the segments in Coffee and Cigarettes.
February 8, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I like maybe one section in C&C and two in NOE. I like most of Mystery Train, but I haven’t watched that or the earlier ones for a long time. I thought Broken Flowers was unbelievably bad.
February 8, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Obviously Button didn’t push your buttons. I found it held me for 166 minutes purely on the level of being a CGI spectacular. Usually CGIs are utilized entirely to make things “blow up real good” (as they say on SCTV’s “Farm Film Report”) Here a small modicrum of suspense was provided surrounding the question of “When does Brad Pitt get to look like Brad Pitt?” His various incarnations diverted me, and I love Jared Harris (who plays the tugboat captain) in anything. He’s my favorite “hysterical actor” (Chabrol’s term) and I highly reccomedn seeking him out in I Shot Andy Warhol (he does the best Andy EVAH!)and Burr Steers woefully neglected Igby Goes Down, in which he superbly delivers one of my favorite lines of recent years: “I told him Lorna Luft was too obscure. They just think you’re doing a bad Liza.”
Otheriwse Cate Blanchett was lovely as usual, Tilda got to play someone who’s quite like herself in real life, and it’s always nice to see Julia Ormond — who was pulled on and thrown off the Hollywood Studio merry-go-round with enormous violence a decade or so back.
It’ll get a ton of awards for the effects but the Oscar’s going to Satyajit Ray on Crack (aka. Slumdog Millionaire.)
February 8, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Harris’s Warhol was great, and his cap’n is good value here too. although he has the worst death speech ever written.
I think you’re right re Oscars, I can’t see this one actually moving people enough. Sure, it’s very pretty indeed, and you can’t see the joins, effectswise, but it’s dramatically a dead duck. And if Fincher’s going to follow the Zemeckis career arc, I’m going to stop watching him.
February 8, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I’ve yet to catch up with Ghost Dog or Broken Flowers, the last thing of Jarmusch’s I recall seeing may be Dead Man, which I had a problem with because it just didn’t seem to go anywhere. I’m not a big fan of Depp, I think he’s someone highly overrated, but I haven’t seen Sweeney Todd, perhaps his involvement with that might redeem him. I didn’t like him as Hunter Thompson (Depp as Groucho Marx), another film that didn’t go anywhere, and From Hell and The Ninth Gate were both disappointing. And Blow blew, especially the ridiculous ending, when Depp’s old-man makeup had him looking like he’d stepped out of an episode of Star Trek. I have seen Coffee and Cigarettes, but I thought it was a minor, somewhat forgettable effort, didn’t hate it, I think indifference is the operative word here. By the way, on a totally different note, has anyone out there seen Peter Ibbetson, with Gary Cooper? I’m thinking I really want to see this film.
February 8, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Pity I’d like it to go to MILK or if it got nominated GRAN TORINO.
Personally I thought Slumdog was Boyle remaking all 5 Antoine Doinel films by transplanting it to India. The style has nothing to do with Satyajit Ray.
February 8, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I said Satyajit Ray on crack. LOVES ME SOME JOHNNY DEPP!!!!
Especially as Hunter S. Thompson as a matter of fact.
“We’re your friends. We’re notlike the others.”
February 8, 2009 at 3:59 pm
And here he is as Sweeney Todd.
February 8, 2009 at 4:04 pm
I’m very happy to find I’m not the only Jared Harris fan around, his Warhol is hilariously accurate and there’s a very odd Michael Almereyda film which tried to marry The Thin Man to The Mummy, with Harris as Nick Charles and Christopher Walken as an Irish (!) necromancer. I can’t recall the name of it but it’s a delirious experience if you ever stumble across it.
Early reports on Button intrigued me, I have never been completely let down by a Fincher film (oh, hang on, Panic Room…) but the closer it got, the less impressive it appeared, and having read the above, well…. there are better things to do. Like watch the snow melt.
February 8, 2009 at 4:18 pm
That Almereyda film sounds intriguing as hell, but he’s another guy who’s let me down in the past. I’ve only seen Nadja and part of Hamlet, though.
I think I’m going to get a look at Peter Ibbetson courtesy of Shadowplayer Peter. Sounds nice.
I wasn’t that interested in Slumdog but then David Bordwell’s piece at his blog made it sound at least somewhat intriguing. But I’m pretty sure I’ll wait. I didn’t like The Full Monty, which was the same writer.
Panic Room is an ineffective thriller with some nice tricks and some cheesy-as-hell tricks (like tracking thru the kettle handle!) but it’s not a totally dull experience while it unfolds. Looking back on it, it’s very dull. Button was dull while it was on, and looking forward to the next phase in Brad’s evolution was only a slight relief. Tilda was fun, but had no reason to be in it. Seriously, what was all that about? And her husband was a spy? SO???
February 8, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I’m sure Tilda was in it because of Brad — who’s exceptionally charming in person.
Jared Harris is also teriffic in The Notorious Bettie Page, particularly in a scene where Gretchen Moll’s Bettie questions him as to the morality of what they’re doing as he sets her up for a photograph in which a ball-restraint is inserted in her mouth.
February 8, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Oh yeah – he’s Irving Klaw, isn’t he? Must watch that soon. David, I agree re Almereyda (he directed an excellent episode of Deadwood, however). The Harris/Walken thingy, which I’ve just recalled was named The Eternal (thanks IMDB) is best watched while on the outside of a bottle or two of wine. Walken’s accent is hands down the most entertaining attempt at an Irish brogue I’ve ever heard, beating Donald Sutherland in The Eagle Has Landed, and Mickey Rourke in A Prayer for the Dying, hands down.
February 8, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Actually the phot0grapher he plays (who worked for the Klaws) is the spectacularly well-named John Willie.
February 8, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Harris is awesome in Bettie P, but the film is a bit of a letdown, playing like a TCM original documentary (all those montages!). It’s a shame because Mol is good, and I liked Harron’s Warhol film. American Psycho has a few very good scenes too.
My favourite screen Oirishman is probably Welles in Lady from Shanghai. I can’t get my head round the fact that he acted with the Gate Theatre, and yet this was the best he could do!
February 8, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I am sure Welles could have done a good accent if he felt it was needed. The film is too baroque to need that realism. But then I have never been particularly obsessed with accents.
February 8, 2009 at 8:32 pm
It certainly doesn’t bother me, I just think it’s funny. And his Scots burr in Macbeth is a bit “Groundskeeper Willie”… but he didn’t have access to modern dialect coaches, and wasn’t aiming for realism, so he just goes for a sort of general impression of an accent. Same with Arkadin etc.
February 8, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Welles’ accent in Lady From Shanghai is truly bad, but endearing to some for that reason I’m sure. Not me. I recall watching it the first time and hearing that hammy brogue was like a sore thumb, stuck out to the eye (ear?). No one has to be obsessed with accents to acknowledge a bad one. In fact, much of that film was a thumb to the eye for me, very busy, very in-your-face, almost tragic in the way Hayworth’s appearance was manipulated in such a way as to make her look harshly unappealing, at a time when the bloom was off the rose between her and Welles. Hardly my favorite noir, give me Touch of Evil any day, as Welles goes, even though it’s at the end of the cycle as opposed to its hotbed. And yes, perhaps intentionally baroque, but my preferred noirs are those more smoothly oneiric, not those that grate,
February 8, 2009 at 10:25 pm
I found her incredibly appealing in Lady From Shanghai. Never more so when she’s dying in a pile of broken mirrors.
The film, however, belongs to Glenn Anders.
February 8, 2009 at 11:23 pm
DC, how I wish you had been brought on to do a little script doctoring on Button. I don’t mind saying that I am very angry at Fincher and F. Scott Fitzgerald for convincing me to show up for an Eric Roth movie.
February 9, 2009 at 12:58 am
The thing is, I’m not quite sure what you could do to Roth’s script — it needs a ground-up re-imagining in order to give the character some balls and a reason for being. As objectionable as Gump is, he has more purpose than this schmuck, whose greatest achievement is apparently working as night watchman somewhere and sneaking in some reading.
Although the thing could have been improved inestimably by cutting 3/4s of the VO. And 1/4 of the dialogue.
And I guess a giant angry baby at the end would’ve helped.
February 9, 2009 at 1:49 pm
You’ve hit on the key problem with the film — what does this guy like to do with his time? What are his interests? What does he think about? What is his point? Why in God’s name should I care that he’s got a yacht?
I wasn’t expecting a great film, but I was surprised at how badly conceived the whole thing was, even if bits of the execution were pretty well done.
February 9, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Oh, and another key problem with the film — stuff like this:
“Your life is defined by its opportunities… even the ones you miss”
“Benjamin, we’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?”
…and, of, course:
“You never know what’s comin’ for ya.”
February 9, 2009 at 4:42 pm
There’s just one problem with your piece on BENJAMIN BUTTON. It’s so amusing that it actually makes me want to see the wretched thing!
Didn’t know, by the way, that the screenwriter also wrote FORREST GUMP. But whenever I saw a clip from BUTTON on TV, all I could think was “This looks like GUMP made by somebody with a modicum of talent!”
Clearly, my critical faculties are more sharply honed than I thought. Even if I do have a weakness for Joan Collins movies…
February 9, 2009 at 5:17 pm
It is basically the same movie as Gump only he’s dull instead of dull-witted. It’s prettier, but not necessarily better-crafted. One of the central challenges for a director would be to come up with attractive and poetic transitions to get you over the time-jumps, but Fincher ignores that opportunity and just makes it a 166 minute montage.
The Hallmark card motto dialogue is offensively bad at times, although I can stand “You never know what’s comin’ for ya,” because it’s at least TRUE and makes sense and isn’t FANCY. But nothing actually does come for BB. Blanchett’s character has a far more interesting life (although the script avoids dealing with the exciting part) but doesn’t get to be the main character.
As for BB’s thought processes — the fact that he’s apparently uninterested in the war until Pearl Harbor, despite the fact that he’s living in Murmansk, suggests he’s not really a take-an-interest kind of fellow.