’Button’ dazzles visually, emotionally
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AP
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Ocak 16, 2009 00:00
LOS ANGELES - 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story about a man who ages in reverse, is rambling and gorgeous -- perhaps a bit overlong and gooey in the midsection -- but one that leaves you with a lingering wistfulness.
It's the damnedest thing. You look into the elderly man's blue eyes behind a pair of old-fashioned spectacles, look at the sweet smile ringed by wrinkles, and you know that it is Brad Pitt under there.
But the special effects are so dazzling and Pitt's performance is so gracefully convincing that you cannot help but be wowed over and over again by "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."
Director David Fincher has always proven himself a virtuoso visual stylist -- to the point of seeming like a shameless showoff at times -- with films like "Fight Club," "Panic Room" and "Zodiac." Here, he has truly outdone himself: He has made a grand, old-fashioned epic that takes mind-boggling advantage of the most modern moviemaking technology.
Based on a short story
Fincher's film, based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, about a man who ages in reverse, is rambling and gorgeous -- perhaps a bit overlong and gooey in the midsection -- but one that leaves you with a lingering wistfulness.
It is just so achingly sad: Pitt, as the title character, is doomed from the start. He can travel the world and live a life that is adventurous and full, but he can never truly be with the woman he loves, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), whom he meets when she is just a little girl (played by Elle Fanning) and he is a boy trapped in an old man's body.
Eric Roth's script may seem naggingly similar to that of "Forrest Gump" -- which he also wrote -- but it seems more concerned with the transformational power of true love than the gimmickry of an unusual existence.
Born with the looks and decrepitude of an 80-year-old man, Benjamin is left on the doorstep of a New Orleans old-folks home at the end of World War I. Despite the newborn's startling appearance, the kindly Queenie (a lovely Taraji P. Henson), who works there, feels immediately drawn to him and raises the baby as her own.
Playful innocence
He feels comfortable among the home's residents, even though he is getting physically younger as they die off one by one. There is a playful innocence to Pitt's performance in these early scenes and a sweetness that he will maintain for the rest of the film.
Benjamin goes to work for a drunk tugboat captain, played by a raucous Jared Harris, functioning in the Lt. Dan role, if you would like to continue the "Gump" analogy, which takes him to Russia and the film's most exciting segment. There, he embarks on an unexpected affair with the wealthy wife of a spy. Tilda Swinton brings smarts and smoldering sensuality to the role -- she shakes the picture up Ñ but she also helps define Benjamin as he grows, internally, into a young man just beginning to understand his own prowess.
It is all preparation for Daisy, anyway -- for the romance they will fleetingly find in the middle of their lives. Blanchett is fiery as the headstrong ballerina who does not immediately realize she is ready for Benjamin, but the way she softens toward him gives the film both a zest and a feeling of melancholy -- because we know it cannot last.
Daisy has been telling his story, and theirs, through a present-day framing device as she lies dying in a New Orleans hospital bed. Hurricane Katrina is on the way, and she has to tell the tale to her daughter (Julia Ormond) before it is too late.
But neither Benjamin nor Daisy questions the complexity of their situation: They merely make the most of it, in ways big and small, for as long as they possibly can.
But the special effects are so dazzling and Pitt's performance is so gracefully convincing that you cannot help but be wowed over and over again by "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."
Director David Fincher has always proven himself a virtuoso visual stylist -- to the point of seeming like a shameless showoff at times -- with films like "Fight Club," "Panic Room" and "Zodiac." Here, he has truly outdone himself: He has made a grand, old-fashioned epic that takes mind-boggling advantage of the most modern moviemaking technology.
Based on a short story
Fincher's film, based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, about a man who ages in reverse, is rambling and gorgeous -- perhaps a bit overlong and gooey in the midsection -- but one that leaves you with a lingering wistfulness.
It is just so achingly sad: Pitt, as the title character, is doomed from the start. He can travel the world and live a life that is adventurous and full, but he can never truly be with the woman he loves, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), whom he meets when she is just a little girl (played by Elle Fanning) and he is a boy trapped in an old man's body.
Eric Roth's script may seem naggingly similar to that of "Forrest Gump" -- which he also wrote -- but it seems more concerned with the transformational power of true love than the gimmickry of an unusual existence.
Born with the looks and decrepitude of an 80-year-old man, Benjamin is left on the doorstep of a New Orleans old-folks home at the end of World War I. Despite the newborn's startling appearance, the kindly Queenie (a lovely Taraji P. Henson), who works there, feels immediately drawn to him and raises the baby as her own.
Playful innocence
He feels comfortable among the home's residents, even though he is getting physically younger as they die off one by one. There is a playful innocence to Pitt's performance in these early scenes and a sweetness that he will maintain for the rest of the film.
Benjamin goes to work for a drunk tugboat captain, played by a raucous Jared Harris, functioning in the Lt. Dan role, if you would like to continue the "Gump" analogy, which takes him to Russia and the film's most exciting segment. There, he embarks on an unexpected affair with the wealthy wife of a spy. Tilda Swinton brings smarts and smoldering sensuality to the role -- she shakes the picture up Ñ but she also helps define Benjamin as he grows, internally, into a young man just beginning to understand his own prowess.
It is all preparation for Daisy, anyway -- for the romance they will fleetingly find in the middle of their lives. Blanchett is fiery as the headstrong ballerina who does not immediately realize she is ready for Benjamin, but the way she softens toward him gives the film both a zest and a feeling of melancholy -- because we know it cannot last.
Daisy has been telling his story, and theirs, through a present-day framing device as she lies dying in a New Orleans hospital bed. Hurricane Katrina is on the way, and she has to tell the tale to her daughter (Julia Ormond) before it is too late.
But neither Benjamin nor Daisy questions the complexity of their situation: They merely make the most of it, in ways big and small, for as long as they possibly can.