The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

3/4 stars

So, a year or two ago, sometime before there was a separate article on Wikipedia for this movie, I was wasting time on said website, and found my way to the article on the short story upon which the movie is based. It's a strange coincidence that a story written long before I was born should be made into an acclaimed film within such a short time of my reading it. Or maybe not. Anyway, this film shouldn't really be compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story; the overlap of a few significant details only confuses the fact that they are different stories that serve different purposes.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a long film, in the best sense. I commented back in 2006 (in response to, among others, Casino Royale, a 2.5 hour Bond movie) that my attention span for a movie is closer to three hours than two. That was probably an overstatement, but two hour movies do sometimes feel a little slight, and I'm happy to grant a third hour of my time to a film that has a good use for it. I'm also fond of movies that have a slow enough pace that, like a novel, you can see distinct sections in them, begin to feel comfortable with a sense of status quo before the events of the film disrupt it. It sounds odd to refer to a movie that spans 85 years as slow-paced, but pacing isn't about how a movie gets through narrative time, it's about how it gets from the beginning to the end. A long movie, when it's good, allows several episodes their appropriate weight and consideration. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a long, sweeping story, with all the complexity and craftsmanship that that entails. It will draw you in and keep you emotionally engaged with what you're seeing for its entire two and three quarter hours.

CCBB (yeah, I just did that) is the story of two lives, and how they are shared. Both Benjamin Button (portrayed by Brad Pitt with a generous amount of soft spoken charm) and Daisy Fuller (portrayed mostly by Cate Blanchett, although Elle Fanning also has a memorable scene) are old when the film begins. She is looking back from her deathbed on him looking forward into an uncertain future. "I was born old," he says simply at one point. As you no doubt are aware, Benjamin is aging backwards, which makes sharing his life with someone else a tricky proposition. You may also have some idea from the ads, what their solution is ("we meet in the middle"). They both have interesting and eventful lives, and the way the world changes around them is what gives the film its massive scope. I especially liked the symmetry of having the film end on the eve of Hurricane Katrina, suggesting the story of city as well as everything else.

I stated last week that the number of Academy Award nominations for this film surprised me. Now I find it interesting to consider how it seems to be an amalgamation of various past Oscar favorites. I think a lot of viewers will notice that it smacks of Forrest Gump, an unusual man with soft spoken Southern charm. Also, what does that recurring hummingbird motif remind you of? The special effects used to allow Brad Pitt to inhabit various ages of the character reminded me of The Lord of the Rings and its hobbits. It even becomes Magnolia for a minute, in an ill advised car crash sequence. If you want to know why I think this is a good but not a great movie, it's that. Yes it entertained me, yes it engaged me, yes it earned the time it took to watch it, and I would watch it again. But I don't think it's the year's best film. As the hasty and underdeveloped coda ("some people get struck by lightning") suggests, it's a good story, but at the end seems to strain to have been about something. It's trying too hard; its fairytale elements are a bit too earnest, its protagonist too purely good. In short, it is wondrous, but it is not curious.

The Aviator

3.5/4 stars

One of the thoughts I kept having during The Aviator was how lucky Leonardo DiCaprio was to have gotten the role. He gives a great performance, maybe his best, but it doesn’t change how fortunate he was that Scorsese saw the great actor in him and gave him this chance to bring it out. The Aviator is one of those actor’s movies, built around a single performance as its centerpiece. DiCaprio delivers the drive and obsession of Howard Hughes, and his powerful neuroses. He manages to unify the two prevalent images of the man, his highs and lows, into one character on the screen. “I care a great deal about aviation,” he says at one point, in an attempt to explain himself, “It is the great joy of my life.” We know what Hughes cares about, and we know what he is afraid of thanks to an opening scene in which his mother warns him strongly about the dangers of disease. We also see why the one gives him some relief from the other; Scorsese illustrates how from above, everything seems like a miniature version of itself, simpler and cleaner.

The rest is Scorsese putting it into context. This seems like a slight way to appreciate such rich work, but it seems to be how the film wants to be viewed. The cinematography mixes retro experimentation (limited color palates, static long shots) with more modern techniques depending on the specific needs of the particular scene. As a period piece, the settings and costumes are thorough and engrossing, and a small army of background characters fills in the spaces.

The major flaw of the film is however that it fails to answer why. We see Hughes personality, illustrated brilliantly, but we don’t understand it. The opening scene mentioned earlier is about all we get by way of motivation for the compulsions that tear Hughes’ life apart. We understand his fascination with flight, but his forceful personality, his simultaneous indulgence and disregard for wealth… these things pose a question that is never answered. I understand that as a biopic, the film must be careful about what it tries to answer with speculation, but when so much speculation is necessarily present anyway, reticence towards completing the task of transforming the person into the character seems somewhat silly.

Still, it’s wasteful to poke holes in such a spectacle. As a show of acting and direction, The Aviator outpaces its worth as a script. But acting and direction are worthwhile crafts, and this is an enjoyable display.