The length of a film is not the best grounds for choosing which one to watch but the over 40’s Melbourne temperatures of last week made the decision easy. Find the longest film on offer at the closest cinema. And so I went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I liked it more than I expected even though I have an automatic resistance to these kinds of films. By this I mean extremely polished, expensive, emotionally manipulative films from the Hollywood stable. I don’t like crying over crap or having sentiment front and centre as a device. I don’t much like Brad Pitt as an actor either. Less pretty is good. And this film is all about pretty – in lots of ways. (And on the Brad topic, I loved this critique of him from film critic A O Scott in the New York Times; “Mr. Pitt seems more interested in the nuances of reticence than in the dynamics of expression”. Originally John Travolta was to have had the role; he would have been a better choice.)
So, what‘s to like? Almost every scene looks like a scene from a picture-story book, with the exception of the “modern” scenes which contrast nicely. The historical scenes are filmed in a luminous sort of candlelight which makes then look both rich and mysterious. I’m sure that part of the reason for this would have been the need to cleverly manage the process of ageing Brad backwards; he is born in the guise of a very old man and becomes younger as the film develops. So soft lighting is important; as the Brad character, Benjamin becomes younger, his co-star, Cate Blanchett, playing Daisy, has to age. The scenes are visually striking; lush and dramatic. It's a lovely film to look at.
The picture story book effect provides the film with licence to be melodramatic. A baby is close to being thrown in the river by his father, a tugboat is blown to bits at war, a woman is knocked down by a car, Hurricane Katrina is whirling round the edges of the modern story. It’s a fable. And provided you accept that it’s a fable, it’s quite satisfying.
A lot of critics have rightly criticised the lack of characterisation in the film. Usually this matters to me but I think this is a film about a larger topic; the passage of time and how humans manage it. It’s about the brief ephemeral intersections of contact and about loss. Loss caused by death and loss caused when people move on or move out of your life.
The most poignant scene for me was late in the film. Benjamin and Daisy intersect many times as she ages and he goes in the opposite direction. After a gap of several years, Benjamin walks through the door of her dance studio and stands, looking at her. She doesn’t initially recognise him. Her face is lined, she is a middle-aged woman. He is a young man, glowing with all the gorgeousness of youth. My mind went immediately to my recent meeting with Geoff, a man I lived with a long time ago. We hadn’t seen each other for many years and so meeting again, were confronted by physical change, by memories of the relationship we had shared and by what was left - nothing really. I felt a sense of loss – not that we no longer had a relationship but that there was nothing left now. No yearning, no nothing. I had the “So what’s it all for?” feeling. It made me feel terribly, terribly sad.
The focus on aging also made me think about my father and his own aging process, the pain of it. It’s painful watching my father go through this. Painful, sad and frustrating. The world becomes smaller and more circumscribed. But not necessarily. Geoff is not in my current life and making that decision decades ago was a good decision. What I have now is rich, lively and full of opportunities. Some options have closed down but I don’t feel like my world is getting smaller; if anything it seems more open-ended and full of promise.
The film comes from a short story written by F Scott Fitzgerald, who had an ongoing preoccupation with the ephemerality of things. I haven’t read it yet but you can download it. The screenplay was written by Eric Roth, who also wrote Forrest Gump. I was pleased when I read this – not because I liked Forrest Gump much but I was reminded of that film while I was watching the Benjamin Button film and I couldn’t work out why – something to do with the over-orchestration of effects and emotions, I think. It’s made me want to go and re-read Scott Fitzgerald which is no bad thing…
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