The Conical Glass: Button, button, who's got the button?

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Button, button, who's got the button?

I don't like long movies. I know that's a silly prejudice. As Siskel & Ebert once said, "No good movie is too long; no bad movie is too short." The Lord of the Rings films and "The Sound of Music" (174 minutes!) are among my favorites. But for the most part, anything longer than, oh, 130 minutes is really pushing it with me. Maybe I have bad memories of desperately having to pee during the last hour of "Titanic," but not wanting to miss any of the boat sinking. I wish intermissions hadn't gone out of style.

So as I sat in a theater last night waiting for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" to begin unspooling, I was alarmed to hear someone behind me say, "This movie is three hours long -- maybe we should have brought provisions." I had smuggled in a big bottle of juice, and made a mental note to keep it in my bag. How could a movie based on a short story (by F. Scott Fitzgerald) be that long?

Well, I'm here to tell you that I was not bored for a single minute during "Benjamin Button." In fact, the experience of watching the film felt remarkably akin to getting lost in a really absorbing novel. It moves at a leisurely pace -- I will admit that the guy sitting next to me nodded off, so it's probably not a great pick for the folks who lined up to see "Transporter 3" last weekend. But I thought it was wonderful.

[Spoiler alert -- if you want to see the movie without knowing anything about the plot, stop right here (it opens nationwide on Christmas Day).]

The movie stars Brad Pitt as a man who ages backwards -- he's born an old man, with arthritis, poor eyesight and hearing, wrinkled skin, and all the other infirmities of advanced age. His mother dies in childbirth and his father is so horrified by the tiny wizened creature that he abandons the baby on the steps of a large house. It turns out to be an old age home, and little Benjamin is taken in by Queenie, a young employee who can't have children of her own. When a doctor tells her Benjamin can't have long to live, she decides to take care of him until he dies. Amazingly, as the years pass, he not only survives, he thrives -- leaving behind his wheelchair and ultimately his cane; hair begins to fill in his bald spots. However, even though he looks like an 80-year-old, he is still a kid on the inside, and when the granddaughter of a resident comes to visit, he doesn't understand why he can't play with her.

The granddaughter turns out to be Daisy (later played by Cate Blanchett), who becomes the love of Benjamin's life. Benjamin becomes a sailor on a tugboat and Daisy moves to New York to study ballet, but there is still a bond between them. They just need to meet again at the right moment, when they appear to be the same age. When that happens, and they look in a mirror, it's poignant; she's starting to develop crow's feet, while his are fading away.

The "real" Brad Pitt, the one we all know and love from the tabloids, doesn't show up onscreen until almost two hours into the movie. The special effects in this movie are phenomenal. It took a year of postproduction, but the results are way better than the usual latex old-age makeup you see in movies. (The almost-40-year-old Blanchett and 40-plus Pitt are also made to look like they're in their early 20s, which is perhaps even more amazing; it's like the Pitt of "Thelma & Louise" has been resurrected!)

I do have one problem with the movie, though. It's told in flashback, from the point of view of a dying, aged Daisy. She is in a hospital in New Orleans (where the story takes place), and Hurricane Katrina is about to make landfall. I don't quite understand why the hurricane had to be shoehorned into the story; did the filmmakers think you can't tell a story about New Orleans nowadays without referencing Katrina? Since the Fitzgerald story was written in the early 1920s, it's hardly an integral part of the plot. Apparently, the film was originally going to be set in Baltimore but Louisiana is offering some killer tax credits so they moved the shoot south and rewrote the script accordingly. The hospital scenes are kind of clunky and don't seem necessary.

The screenplay was written by Eric Roth, the guy who penned "Forrest Gump," so perhaps it's no wonder that a couple people walking out were complaining about how "sappy" the film was. ("Did you see 'Slumdog Millionaire'?" one of them asked, objecting to the "sappiness" of that movie as well. They can't all be "Seven"!) Maybe it is a little "sappy," but it's opening on Christmas Day and I think it would be a swell film to go see with the family after you've opened presents and eaten turkey.

Note to one particular person who reads this blog (you know who you are): the film isn't just titled "Benjamin Button," buttons factor into the storyline, and the opening shots depict thousands of them. Forewarned is forearmed!

posted by 125records @ 1:36 PM

5 Comments:

At 11:55 PM, Janet A said…

This is one I had on my list to see. I am glad to hear it is done well.

How is the car?
At 11:18 AM, Flasshe said…

Guess I'll have to skip it...
At 7:09 PM, yellojkt said…

The last movie I saw that had an intermission was Reds.

And what does flasshe have against buttons?
At 8:32 PM, 125records said…

yellojkt: read this post for the answer...
At 9:55 AM, James said…

I felt the same way! I took a couple of visiting friends from London to the screening last week and we were all enthralled by the story. And the digital effects are Oscar-worthy, for sure. It's easily the best of the "mainstream" Christmas movies I've seen so far this year (and I've seen SEVEN POUNDS, YES MAN, MARLEY & ME, etc.). Tell those people who complained that BENJAMIN was sappy that they should head for an industrial-strength downer like REVOLUTIONARY ROAD or THE READER instead! They'll be begging for a few drops of sappiness (although I must say that REVOLUTIONARY is beautifully acted and written and a pretty astonishing piece of filmmaking, and THE READER has more sex than any film of its type in ages...).