The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2009, Criterion)
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In a half-serious battle over whose giant robots rock harder, McG recently challenged Michael Bay to a genital-measuring contest, but having just finished all 165 goddamn minutes of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I’m willing to bet that David Fincher would beat them both. At the very least, he’s got to have the biggest balls in Hollywood.
Loosely based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (or, if you believe some people, a book of decidedly more recent vintage), Button tells the tale of a man who was born old and lived his life backwards, eventually dying in the arms of his one true love as an 85-year-old infant. As concepts go, it’s brilliant, and — as made plain by the voluminous bonus material included on the second disc of Criterion’s lovingly curated special edition — the kind of picture that would have been all but impossible to properly make more than 10 years ago. Of course, cutting-edge special effects and a $160 million budget don’t necessarily mean you’re going to wind up with a movie worth watching — even, as it turns out, if you have one of the best directors in the business at the helm.
Fincher has been doing solid work since his days as an ad man and music video director, and despite making his bones as a purveyor of darker (and sometimes sickly twisted) fare, he’s always made sure his movies have a heart. When you’re talking about stuff like Seven or Zodiac, that sentimental streak provides a useful counterbalance — but here, despite Fincher’s stated intentions, it overwhelms everything, hammering the viewer with a succession of shockingly ham-handed sequences that run the gamut from ominous (not five minutes in, screenwriter Eric Roth resorts to the dreaded phrase “some say he died of a broken heart”) to simply infuriating (without giving too much away, let me just tell you that the film’s final act resulted in me giving the finger to a hummingbird and stalking out of the room). It’s the kind of movie that lets you know right away that it intends to be BIG — the introduction wraps a framing device in a framing device — and spends nearly three hours doing everything it can to live up to that goal, with the notable exception of actually being a good film. (more…)
F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously declared that there are no second acts in American lives. It’s a good thing that the 