The Greatest Films #9: Curious Case of Benjamen Button
Background:
David Fincher’s most famous movie, Fight Club, is on many people’s favorite movies list. I still think what the movie was supposed to be about, how it was executed, and the eventual interpretations of it, are all a little murky, but still, its an awesome flick. It is supposed to be a critique of male machismo and materialism, frankly I have no idea what it is, except that it is pretty fucking good.
Moreover, I never considered Fincher one of the greats until Button. With this movie, he proved to everyone his greatness. Most people had already made this conclusion when he made Zodiac, but for some reason that flick just didn’t click with me.
What it is about:
Anyone who has ever seen Forrest Gump will recognize the general structure of the movie is very similar to Button. (same writer Eric Roth) Button’s premise, of a boy growing up backwards, is fairly famous by now. The film opens with Daisy, already old, telling her daughter about a love affair she had when she was young.
Like Gump, the film doesn’t seem to really have a particular direction or obvious climax. As in, I had no idea how it was going to end. That isn’t to say that it is a twist-ending, I’m just pointing out that the movie is more about the journey than the destination.
The focus of the film is on Benjamen Button who is physically old when he is born and grows younger – which is weird. He falls for a young girl Daisy and ends up loving her his entire life. It takes a long time for them to grow to the same age physically and mentally and it isn’t until then that a relationship flourishes.
Why it is a great film:
With such a premise this movie surely could have been totally corny. It uses its science-fiction/fantasy elements, not to abuse a built-in audience, but to consider existential ideas. Many felt freaked out by the awkward pedophilic suggestions, but I never got the connection. Button has, from what we can tell, a physical disability. He is actually a boy when the two first meet. They’re the exact same age, just look physically different. Moreover, what the movie is about I don’t even think Fincher would be able to place exactly. Most of all, I think it is about the passage of time and that we are inevitable victims of mortality. While Fincher’s Social Network, another great film, was fast paced and energetic with its technique, Button is mediative.
When Daisy and Button finally get together there is a powerful feeling that these moments are fleeting. Like all our relationships, the end is coming soon, or at least too soon than we’d like. This is not a cynical view that the movie the takes. It is not Kubrickian. Instead, it is a Japanese view . Mono No Aware I think its called, which is a sensitivity to ephemera. At the end of the movie Fincher does something that some hailed as genius and others as unnecessary. I think A.O. Scott even used the word superfluous. I know Fincher made the right choice. Yes, the rest of the movie movie was trying to avoid such overt imagery or devices, but as I always say, when it comes to symbolic devices, you can never be too obvious.
If the movie seems too dark or too depressing for some people, I suppose that is their problem. The final shot is bittersweet in its meaning: That the flow of time and passing cannot be stopped. That people long to be able to turn back the clock. Though Benjamin doesn’t have temporal differences from our own, he feels the physical effects and pains of aging different than others. However, other than his physical disabilities, he is not unlike anyone else in his mental maturation. That his relationships don’t work out and that his life is a mystery filled with episodic loneliness and fleeting pleasure only makes the film more universal. It is one of my favorite movies of the past five years and with Fincher having just made Network, I think he is proving he one of the true masters of the past two decades.
-Collin
Recent Comments