The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - David Kirkeby
A lot has changed since 1941. The methods of how one makes a movie have changed dramatically; however, the one constant is the audiences’ desire to see a captivating story. In this sense The Curious Case of Benjamin Button does not deliver. After seeing Button I find my self thinking back to Orson Welles’ 1941 classic Citizen Kane. Both films put the entirety of a man’s life in their scopes. Much has been made about David Fincher’s decision to use Brad Pitt to portray his film’s title character throughout his lifetime, but in reality Fincher uses three other actors to play Button during his childhood. In comparison Welles only used one other actor to play Kane during his younger years.
Despite the lack of computer graphics in Citizen Kane, Orson Welles was able to create the portrait of a man whose evolution flows seamlessly as time passes. He was only twenty-five when he played Charles Foster Kane, but he did a remarkable depiction of the character’s later years.. Many current films, like Benjamin Button have come to depend upon effects, instead of using the effects to enhance the film’s story, and Brad Pitt’s depiction of his character falls flat.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two films is not the obvious difference in special effects but instead is the films’ story structure. Fincher overloads his film with style, attempting to cover up the fact that his film lacks any kind of a narrative. The film jumps from one part of Button’s life to the next without ever unifying its various segments.
One example of the film’s divisive nature that jumps out is the time Benjamin spends in Russia. These scenes aren’t badly made but they seem to be in the wrong movie. They never tie back into story, instead they just take up time. So many scenes in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could be removed, because they are simply not needed to progress the plot forward. One has to wonder what Fincher could have done with a better script. Fitzgerald’s short story has attracted a number talented people over the years that looked to bring it to the big screen.
Did William Faulkner’s original screenplay suffer from the same problems as the version currently in theaters? I would like to think that it didn’t, but I don’t actually know. What I do know is that Faulkner was a Nobel Prize winner who created works of literary genius. For too long the world of cinema has been separate from that of good storytelling. That’s not to say that literary world and the world of cinema are not intertwined, however studios and filmmakers often ignore what made their source material successful.
In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button it seems that screenwriter Eric Roth has chosen to recycle what made Forrest Gump so successful. Sure both films put their characters at the center of historical events, but the two movies overlap more than you might think. For reference just watch the satirical short,The Curious Case of Forrest Gump, a good comparison of the two films. It has been taken down from most sites but deserves to be searched out. Eric Roth recycled his Forrest Gump script and fooled enough people to get another Oscar nomination.
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button - Cynthia Kirkeby
Sitting in the theater watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button there was the curious feeling that something felt familiar. The movie was not amazing. It was interesting at points, slow in others. The make-up jobs and special effects used to make Brad Pitt transition through his life were interesting, but the fact that my mind pondered those during the film, told me that things were amiss in the film. I shouldn't have had my mind on that until after the "magic" of the film was over.
Coming out of the film, our group discussed the inconsistencies of feel throughout the movie; how the impetus that dives characters forward seemed to be lacking in so many places. The characters did things in the film, such as Benjamin going to Russia to fish, that did nothing to move the story forward in a positive way. The feeling was... so, he went to Russia, so what? He didn't seem to learn anything from it. It was just a thing that happened in the film, without any important consequence. Coming back and discussing things further, my son reminded me that the screenwriter was a talented man, after all Eric Roth wrote the screenplay for Forest Gump.
The overall feeling that I had coming out of Benjamin Button was that it was an okay film, somewhat forgettable. It seemed to be suffering from a lack of tight editing, but worse than that. It seemed to have too many scenes and happenings that seem inconsistent with the tone of the story. I now feel that it's important to go read the book to see how far it strays from the movie. My guess is that it must stray quite a bit. The discussion on Forest Gump triggered further discussions on the similarities between the two scripts, and then my son sent me a copy of the following film comparison that explained so much!
Personally, I feel as though Eric Roth just tried to flummox America by plugging in the details from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button into the outline he used for Forest Gump. To nominate this film for best adapted screenplay as it was today in the Academy Awards, and as it was in the Golden Globe Awards, seems to me to be about the same as nominating a kid in school that you've discovered cheated on a project. It may not be technically cheating, but it's rather like recycling a project you created for one class, and then modifying it to fit another class. It becomes a bit of a disjointed project that's not quite up to snuff, because the information in the second class, doesn't quite fit into the structure of the first project. Seeing this take place in a major film just doesn't sit well, especially when a superb film like The Dark Knight has been all but ignored.
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