THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

Written by Eric Roth
Directed by David Fincher
Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond and Tilda Swinton


Daisy: What’s it like growing younger?
Benjamin: Can’t say; I’m always looking in my own eyes.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON certainly has no trouble living up to its name. It is very curious indeed, for instance, how a man can be born to this world the size of an infant but with the physical affliction of a man at death’s door. It is remarkable that a two and a half hour epic can be so consistently beautiful to behold and breathtaking until its final moments. While it isn’t the least bit unusual to catch Cate Blanchett on top of her game, it is certainly impressive to see Brad Pitt exhibit such restraint and internalized inquisitiveness. It is definitely intriguing to witness a director as dark as David Fincher (ZODIAC, SE7EN, FIGHT CLUB) abandon the genre that made him who he is and side step into such a grand, romantic piece with such apparent ease and enthusiasm. But it is perhaps most curious how this film, where every element is so delicately placed and nurtured to a point where it borders on technical perfection, can be so cold and empty an experience despite itself.


Of course, within the context of the film, the curious thing about Benjamin Button is that he is aging backwards while all of humanity is progressing naturally. Benjamin must suffer through his childhood in the body of an old man who has already lived his life when he is really just discovering it. Too frail to participate, he must watch life happen from the front porch of the old age home that has taken him in. Here, he bears witness to life in its final stages and grows accustomed to the constant presence of death. His perspective is undeniably unique as he is always moving forward despite the reversed nature of his physical growth. Yet, this view and the wisdom it could bring are not shared with Benjamin’s most ardent observers, the audience. We are here for his story and the meaning it could bring to our relatively uncomplicated existences but instead, all we are given is the story itself. This amounts to little more than the long life of Benjamin Button, which would not be particularly different if it weren’t for the whole aging backwards thing.


It is one thing certainly to have all of the characters who encounter Benjamin accept him for who he is but that expectation is mildly unrealistic to ask of an audience. Still, this film has been bouncing around Hollywood for years for a number of reasons, not the least of which was figuring out how to make it look realistic. Fincher finally settled on having graphs of Pitt’s face drafted onto actors of different sizes and stature playing him at various stages of his aged infancy. The results are entirely believable and the makeup work, which so often detracts in such extreme cases such as these, is quite complimentary. And so visually, we buy into it. The performances also guide us to do the same as they are natural and heartfelt. And as if this weren’t enough to transport us to this historic, fantasyland, Claudio Miranda’s rich, contrasting cinematography does everything needed to fill in whatever gaps were left. With all this effort spent to make sure we believe what we are seeing, it is an awful shame that equal time wasn’t spent on giving us something to believe in.

I blame Eric Roth. With so many things going for THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, I have to lay the blame somewhere and Roth is the easiest person to point at. Roth’s script is epic in proportion but minute in terms of purpose and meaning. Having proven his ability to carry people on long life journeys, such as that of FORREST GUMP, it is clear why he would be chosen to expand F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story into such a long film. In the process though, he took an unconventional concept and told it as conventionally as he could (did I mention that Benjamin’s entire story is read from a diary at Blanchett’s hospital deathbed). He created a character that is not so unlike the naïve Forrest. Benjamin is an observer of life; he watches it move forward from a perspective that none of us can truly comprehend and one that sadly, Roth and Fincher never allow us to see.

MUNICH

Written by Tony Kushner & Eric Roth
Directed by Steven Spielberg

Writer's Note: This first paragraph talks about the final scene of the film. I do not discuss anything that will ruin the ending for you but you have been warned.

It is a gray day. Avner (Eric Bana) meets with his former employer from the Israeli government in a park in Brooklyn, New York. He has nearly lost his mind to paranoia, always wondering when someone will end the hunt and finally find him. During his unofficial employment with the Mossad, Avner headed a team of five men whose mission was to track down the members of Palestinian terrorist group, Black September. This group was behind the tragedy at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, Germany, where 11 Israeli athletes were murdered after being held hostage. It has become abundantly clear that he can and likely will suffer the same fate as the men on his hit list and he needs reassurance that he can at the very least trust the people of his homeland, the people that trusted this mission to him in the first place. His former liaison, Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), dismisses his concerns, allowing Avner a moment to breathe. Ephraim then declines Avner’s invitation to break bread and two large buildings in the background of the frame catch your eye while Avner stands still and puzzled. These two buildings are the twin towers destroyed on September 11, 2001 in what has been described as one of the most devastating terrorist attacks ever to take place on American soil. This moment, I apologize, comes at the very end of the film and stretches the issue of justification past the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, finding Spielberg asking his audience if there is ever any true resolution to any ongoing violent conflict between nations or between peoples.

Spielberg’s film interpretation is not specifically about the Munich killings but more so about what came afterwards, while always paying mind to what came before and led up to the event. In telling this story, he is walking a fine line trying not to offend while remaining authentic. I don’t doubt Spielberg’s genuine interest in remaining objective here. In fact, it was imperative he do so to successfully force his audience to question the usage of violence as a means to resolve conflict. Had he shown the Jewish retaliators as nothing more than a beaten people unquestionably right in their quest for revenge, than he would have created nothing more than a sympathy inducing manipulation. Of course there is something of a sympathetic element for these assassins who see themselves as soldiers but that’s inevitable as their people were undeniably wronged in Munich at the hands of murderers. Only these five men are not your typical soldiers. They’re toy-makers, antiques dealers, expecting fathers. They are regular men with one common dedication among them, Israel. Their convictions can only take them so far as when it comes time to actually pull the trigger or detonate the bomb, the awareness that they are about to take someone’s life becomes a painful curse they hadn’t realized their beliefs might not be able to carry them through. The lack of experience as well as the naïve approach become visible as Avner corners the first name on the list. He fumbles as he pulls his gun from his pants and almost lowers it while the condemned begs for his life. Is this really going to help change the future for the better? No. However, the alternative is to take the Munich injustice sitting down.

MUNICH is not just a moral conflict story about the nature of right and wrong despite watching heroes become detached from the brutality of their lives. It is also an energetic thriller. Spielberg has delivered so many solid, enjoyable popcorn movies in the past and here he brings his knowledge and applies it to the tragic underbelly of humanity. The unofficial Mossad kill team are natural underdogs because of their small, humble lives and not because they’re Jewish. They travel from one European city to the next, gathering information on the locations of the names on their list and carrying out their duty to kill these men. Spielberg brings so much humanity to these hunts. Innocent bystanders’ lives are often threatened or ended and even the men they are meant to kill have families and fragility. The heroes also make small, potentially disastrous errors on their missions. This all leads to the paranoia and confusion over whether they’re making these mistakes or are outsiders setting them up to make them. In some, the paranoia leads to guilt while in others, the guilt leads to insanity. And as if the viewer weren’t in enough despair already, Spielberg doesn’t show the Munich massacre at the beginning of the film to charge the audience behind the Israelis. Instead he reveals the developing details at different intervals throughout the film to remind the viewer how this particular mission began. And as we are wrapped up in the intrigue and morality of this mission, these violent flashbacks serve also as reminders to the team of a reality they had long left behind out of necessity.

Of course the Israel/Palestine conflict did not begin with the Munich Olympics killings. And Spielberg does not tell the story of the mindset behind the men who carried out that mission. If he did though, I would imagine there would be just as much torment in the minds of those killers as the killers who are this film’s heroes. MUNICH does not pass judgment on nations but on mankind, asking us to find the better way. As the Israel/Palestine conflict is not over, nor the numerous other needlessly violent world conflicts, and though MUNICH takes a rather violent approach to advocate peace, it still makes a powerful and intelligent argument for immediate change.