It could be worse. It could be snow-- aw, crap.

[apocalypsos]

So my mom took me and my great-uncle to go see Benjamin Button.

After I came back, I did what I usually do after movies if I haven't already, which is hit up the IMDb page. Ebert gave it two and a half stars. I usually feel about the same way as he does about movies. It wasn't bad, really. It's worth seeing at least once. The makeup and special effects are very good. Most of the cast did a good job with what they had to work with. I just ... I don't really have a desire to see it again. The length isn't the problem, it was just a lot of little things that added up to one big bug. Like:

-- Was the Hurricane Katrina stuff really necessary? Really? It sure as hell didn't seem like it, other than as a painfully obvious metaphor.

-- Where the hell was Caroline when Daisy was sharing her room at the old folks' home with an infant? Or even just when there was an infant living there?

-- I like Brad Pitt, I do. He just felt like the weak link in the cast, and he's the one they're giving award nominations for. Seriously? If he wins the Oscar over Mickey Rourke or Sean Penn I'd be genuinely surprised and completely disappointed.

-- If Benjamin was aging backwards complete with the age-appropriate afflictions, why did he get Alzheimer's when he was physically an adolescent? And shouldn't he have started out an adult-sized man like in the Fitzgerald story? Although okay, EW. I know it's supposed to be a fantasy, but it just bugged. In every other way it was pretty consistent to the conceit and then ... *flop*

-- If there's one thing that bothers me about paternity plot points, it's ones that require the kid to have never noticed when her mother and (step)father got married as opposed to her age. Or never look at her birth certificate.

-- They could have trimmed about ten minutes from the story just by getting rid of the backstory about how Daisy got hit by the taxi. How did Benjamin know all of that stuff to put it in the diary? What the taxi driver who hit her and the passenger did, maybe. And even so, it's a completely unnecessary waste of time.

There's probably other things that bothered me about the movie that I could bring up, but I can't recall right now. Just ... meh. I'd rather watch Slumdog again.

Comments

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

The thing that struck me about Benjamin Button was that there was no reason for the first two hours of the movie to be made. I mean, if everyone was going to be walking around going "NOTHING TO SEE HERE LALALALALALALA" what was the point of his experiences? I've seen Saving Private Ryan; I don't need to see anyone ever go to war again, unless it's going to actually do something interesting with the fact that he's in a very unique position.

When I actually started to like the movie was when it went to Cate Blanchett's point of view - about the time he showed up in the dance studio and she'd remarried. THEN I felt like we were seeing a movie that should have been made, that was interesting and painful and just amazing.

That's leaving out my problems with the race issue, the Katrina story, and the fact that I would put a lot of money on the original being a very classist story; that didn't come across in the movie.

[septembergrrl.livejournal.com]

the fact that I would put a lot of money on the original being a very classist story

I'd call it more sexist than it is classist. The screenplay writer took the main character's name and the central idea and that was IT -- none of the supporting characters even have the same names, let alone the same motivations or actions, and there's not much racial component to the plot except a comment that Benjamin's father almost wishes he could still sell his child for a slave. (In the original, he was born in 1865.) Fitzgerald's story's a lot more about omgwtfaging backwards.

It's also very, very sad at the end.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

See, that was a big problem I had with the movie that I kind of glossed over up there to avoid starting wank, but I don't mean it to, so I hope no one takes it that way. I had a HUGE problem with the issue of race in the movie because it was unrealistic. Is anyone seriously going to tell me that in 1918 New Orleans, black people would have had the power that they had in that nursing home? (I admit I came in late, so it's possible that his mother didn't own the house, but that's not the impression I had.) That none of the residents might be the teensiest bit racist? That seriously no one cared that this visibly-white kid was the foster child of black parents? While there's compelling explanations for all of those things to be true, avoiding explaining how they're true isn't good film-making, it's revisionist history. (I mean, insofar as a fictional movie is historical.)

So all of that said, I'm not at all surprised to hear that that tone was very much present in the original; nor am I surprised that it's sexist. I based classist on Gatsby, which is the only thing by Fitzgerald that I've read, but I think I'm going to check this out just to see how much it diverges and if I like it better than I did the movie.

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

haven't seen it yet, but the plot of the movie made me consider using serial immortality in original fic. Grow old, age backward, grow old. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

[daniidebrabant.livejournal.com]

I have. P. Service's post apocalyptic Arthurian books has Merlin having spent the years in the mountain going back and forth and back and forth and coming back at the appropriate time as a 14 year old VERY annoyed he can't grow a beard and shut up everyone who seems to think he's lying.

...Have I mentioned I love those books?

[newredshoes]

The film was gorgeous to look at? But I was seriously checking my watch during that taxi sequence. Just STOP TALKING.

The very first flashback sequence, about the blind clockmaker, would have been a beautiful, perfect short film. The doughboys running backwards over the minefields and trenches was gorgeous and poignant; too bad it was totally tacked on.

Anyway. Pretty for the eye candy and the cinematography, but unfortunately also pretty unnecessary as a film with a message. And yeah, Katrina: too soon? I don't know. Definitely an anvil I didn't need.

[xturtle.livejournal.com]

It was really a Forrest Gump rehash. Complete with beat-you-over-the-head cgi symbolism. I didn't hate it, but it sure wasn't as deep as it claims to be.

[ralob.livejournal.com]

His mind matured and aged forwards while his body grew younger. Hence, he had dementia as a child. That is what I got out of it. *shrugs* I quite liked the movie. Though I feel Daisy was sort of a bitch. And the Hurricane Katrina reference was cheesy as hell.

[irradiatedsoup.livejournal.com]

I like Brad Pitt, I do. He just felt like the weak link in the cast

This.

my own niggles

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

1) The eyes: they go to infinite trouble to put an aged version of Brad Pitt's face on the small-scale body doubles... and then he still has Pitt's bright, vivid eyes. Wasn't the baby Benjamin supposed to be all cataract-y?

2) As much as I enjoy the cognitive dissonance of saying that a David Fincher movie reminded me of Forrest Gump, it was really a bit much. The eccentric boat captain, the feather/hummingbird symbology, the reactive central character, the... oh, right: same screenwriter. Good thing that injecting CGI characters into real footage has palled over the last several years, or we probably would've seen Benjamin on the grassy knoll in Dallas, or something.

3) That whole montage of them in the apartment, as the Beatles song plays? *snip*

4) There's one shot of handsome!Benjamin where he's sailing a boat while wearing sunglasses that neatly crosses over the movie/J Crew catalogue border.

Re: my own niggles

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

3) That whole montage of them in the apartment, as the Beatles song plays? *snip*

I don't know, I thought that was kinda cute, but it may have just been me. :)

I think they could have made a really good, really interesting two-hour movie if they started with that scene in the ballet studio where Benjamin comes back. And instead of leaving later he stays back because he was unable to stay away from Daisy or Caroline, and then this backstory unfolds in bits and pieces as the kid meets him and interacts with him.

But I mean, that would have been one way to go that might have worked better than this. The Katrina bits, with Old!Daisy and the daughter, could go the easiest, since the diary schtick is a waste anyway. That gets rid of the clock story in the beginning of the movie, which is a nice short film but not really necessary unless you like piling plodding metaphors into an already metaphor-heavy movie. That's got to chop out at least forty-five minutes of the movie right there.

There is a great movie hiding in there, it's just hidden under these cheap Hollywood trappings.

[maharetr.livejournal.com]

I like the concept, and it was very pretty to watch, but... yeah.

The Katrina thing was the one that made me go "buh?" the most. It just didn't fit, even within the frame of the movie: the hospital people are way too calm as the camera pulls back at the end, and all I could think was "they're going to have to abandon her body, and it's going to bloat and rot in the heat afterwards" which kinda ruined the moment. That, and the whole diary-as-a-narrator thing. It seems like really lazy storytelling to me.

[beanarie.livejournal.com]

Yes, too much of the story depends on Caroline having the perception of a rock. I was bothered by that as well.

Okay, on the Katrina thing. In interviews the people involved in the film have gone on and on about New Orleans being another character in the story. I think this was their cockeyed and ultimately unsuccessful way of paying their respects. Today it would be hard to conceive of a story about New Orleans that didn't acknowledge Katrina at some point, right?

[septembergrrl.livejournal.com]

I liked the movie a little more than you did, but two of the things you mentioned were my big problems with it:

Where the hell was Caroline when Daisy was sharing her room at the old folks' home with an infant? Or even just when there was an infant living there?

To be fair, Caroline does get a line about how she's not close to her mom. But STILL. That's fucking weird to NEVER notice or hear about at all.

If there's one thing that bothers me about paternity plot points, it's ones that require the kid to have never noticed when her mother and (step)father got married as opposed to her age. Or never look at her birth certificate.

My husband and i had an argument about precisely that. He thought it was implied the kid knew her stepdad wasn't her real father and just didn't know who her real father was; I have no idea where he's getting that from at this point, but I'm willing to accept it mighta maybe been implied.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

He thought it was implied the kid knew her stepdad wasn't her real father and just didn't know who her real father was; I have no idea where he's getting that from at this point, but I'm willing to accept it mighta maybe been implied.

The closest I can remember is somewhere around the apartment montage when she says something, "Mom, how long after this did you meet Dad?" Which I got the impression implied that she thought her stepdad was her real dad, and therefore they'd have to meet soon in the storyline or else she wouldn't be born.

[septembergrrl.livejournal.com]

Which I got the impression implied that she thought her stepdad was her real dad, and therefore they'd have to meet soon in the storyline or else she wouldn't be born.

THAT'S WHAT I GOT OUT OF IT TOO but it turned into one of those irritating conversations where you can tell you won't agree and, hey, it's just a movie.

So.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

That's one of the reasons I think the whole Katrina arc should have been scrapped. The rest of the story would have worked fine without it, the character of Caroline bothered me for being either somewhat oblivious or completely oblivious, and at the end of the movie when I should have been ruminating on the love story, all I could think was, "Wait, her body's in a hospital during Katrina? Yeah, that bodes well for it. Ew."

[septembergrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeaaaaah, the Katrina arc felt heavyhanded and they should have done more with Caroline so she didn't seem like a total moron. Maybe it's part of what they cut to get it down to three hours and whatever.