The Curious Case of Benjamin Button* (2008)

Audiences, meet Oscar bait. Oscar bait, meet audiences. Bluntly speaking, that is what The Curious Case of Benjamin Button amounts to. It dabbles with a little bit of everything that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences typically goes gaga for. It’s a period piece of sorts, it’s a dramatic love story, it’s got lush scenery and visuals, plus brilliant stars and an accomplished director at the helm. Yes, for a while there, this was the film that everyone was talking about heading into awards season.

An elderly woman named Daisy (Cate Blanchett) lies dying in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina looms outside. Though she has lived a long life she has one more story to tell- that of her many encounters with a strange and fantastic man named Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt). With her daughter at her side she begins to read from Benjamin’s diary a tale that spans 85 years.

Benjamin was born with a bizarre condition. As a baby he was shriveled like an old man and retained this appearance as he grew through his adolescence. Abandoned by his father, Benjamin is adopted by an African-American woman (Taraji P. Henson) and raised like a son. As he grows older numerically, Button’s appearance changes in reverse. Knowing that he is destined for a different life, Benjamin travels the world for meaning, crossing paths with Daisy at unexpected times. This leads to a complicated romance that spans decades.

From the previews, this film looked like it was going to be something like Forrest Gump with a more serious, fantasy-driven twist. Had this film been anything like that at all, it probably wouldn’t have been so frustratingly dull. Benjamin Button is two hours and forty minutes of moody drama. It’s easy to grasp the idea that Daisy and Benjamin’s romance will be difficult. How could it not? One person gets older while the other appears to get younger? There’s only so much time when their appearances would be similar enough to avoid controversy.

Benjamin Button may have lived a unique life but none of it is very remarkable in comparison with his condition. For a film that spans almost all of the 20th century, there’s very little intersection with history to be seen. Instead of placing the main characters in historical places at historical times, the world of Benjamin and Daisy melts through the years with little to no connection the ‘real world.’ There’s plenty of period detail but that’s where it ends. Maybe the filmmakers didn’t want to tie in notable events to avoid comparisons to Gump. Maybe they just thought it wasn’t right in order to keep the production tied to the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story (which I have not read).

Pitt and Blanchett do a solid job of playing two troubled individuals whose lives are intertwined. Hope, confusion, fear and sadness radiate from their faces. This, combined with a muted color palate dripping with mood and style, creates a film that is beautiful to look at but boring to watch. Deft direction, good camerawork and all the fine details are here. The only thing missing is an exciting story. Button is an intriguing concept but along the way to making a film that looks like a gorgeous still-life in motion they forgot to add a little life to the film.

I’m not asking for Button to wander through history and bump shoulders with a veritable list of who’s who, but placing him and Daisy in or around familiar events would have given audiences something to grab onto. Instead we’re left with another star-crossed lovers tale with a unique twist. It’s probably not artsy-fartsy enough to satisfy the art-house crowd but Button is a little too serious and artsy for general audiences to warmly embrace it.

While I found it to be a tedious viewing experience at times, I see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for what it is. What it lacks in livelihood it makes up for in all the other areas. For that reason alone it is a solidly good film. Taking a few more creative liberties with the script could have made it a real winner and a legitimate contender for Best Picture.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5

Legends of the Fall (1994)

Family drama, romance, war and an examination of masculinity all thrive in this beautifully shot film by Edward Zwick. Featuring a talented cast, beautiful location filming and plenty of meaty, makes-you-think subject matter, Legends of the Fall is a film that every man should see and one that every woman might be able to enjoy as well.

After becoming disillusioned with the US government, Colonel William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) moves his family to the frontier lands of Montana. His wife chooses to return to the East Coast after the harsh winters are too much for her, leaving Ludlow to raise his three sons with the help of a few Native American farmhands. As the boys grow up, it is clear that they are all wired differently. Alfred (Aidan Quinn) is the cautious rule follower, Tristan (Brad Pitt) the wild and macho boy, and Samuel (Henry Thomas) is smart but naïve.

Samuel goes to college and returns one day with a beautiful fiancée, Susannah (Julia Ormond). Both Alfred and Tristan are smitten with the lovely lady but Susannah is more taken by Tristan’s machismo than Alfred’s business savvy. Caught up in the whirlwind of war, all three brothers join the Canadian Expeditionary Force to fight the Germans in World War I. Samuel dies in combat, leading Tristan to go on a testosterone and rage-fueled rampage behind enemy lines. While this scenario is mostly outrageous, it serves to solidify Tristan’s wild man persona.

Alfred and Tristan return home, where Alfred proposes to Susannah and promises that his business prospects offer a good and stable life for the two of them. Susannah declines and falls into the arms of Tristan instead. This drives the brothers apart on multiple levels. First, Alfred is merely jealous for losing Susannah’s affections. Second, he is fed up with his brother’s irresponsible way of life and chastises Tristan for not be stable husband material. This falling out ends with Alfred swearing off his family and leaving the estate to pursue business ventures in Helena.

Plagued by guilt for one brother’s death and the other’s abandonment of the family, Tristan takes off to wrestle with his demons in the wild. For years, he travels the globe and struggles to reconcile with all that he has done and could not do. Susannah struggles to cope without Tristan and gives in to Alfred’s proposals. All is well and good until Tristan returns. Susannah’s feelings for the wild man come rushing back, Alfred still has nothing but spite for his brother and Tristan’s attempt to form a normal life comes crashing down around him.

Despite all of the beautiful scenery and solid cinematography, Legends of the Fall never really grips you the way it wants to. While the drama is quite good (though it does border on soapy territory on more than one occasion), the overall effect of the film is that of watching events unfold rather than experiencing these events with the characters. Perhaps this is because Tristan is too perfectly untamable and Alfred is too perfectly constructed as a proper man. Not until the film’s final minutes do we see any serious change in these characters’ tones.

Despite this sizable shortcoming, Legends of the Fall is a great reflection on masculinity. Alfred and Tristan’s outlooks are polar opposites and their discussions and observations give you a lot to think about. There has to be a middle ground somewhere between Tristan’s nature boy and Alfred’s spineless profiteer but this rare blend of boldness and sensibleness still eludes us to this day. I can’t tell if that should come as comfort to men who struggle to find this balance or if it will only serve to frustrate us further to know that this battle to be the best man possible hasn’t been at a stalemate for centuries.

The acting in this film helps hold the story together at time. Brad Pitt goes all out to capture the essence of Tristan, Aidan Quinn is sharp as a tack as Alfred, and Anthony Hopkins is enjoyable as ever as the distressed and later curmudgeonly father. If not for their dedication and spot-on performances, this film could have easily been dismissed as prairie romance pulp.

While there are many parts of the story that aren’t likely to be remembered long after the final reel, Legends of the Fall is a captivating tale. Sit back and marvel at the scenery and get your brain ready for a post-film discussion about what it takes to be a “real man.”

RATING: 3.5 out of 5

Sabrina (1995)

A light-hearted remake of a Hollywood classic (which I have not seen), Harrison Ford oozes his usual charm while trying to woo a young woman away from his engaged brother to protect his family and the family business. Filled with old school cinema sensibilities in mind, there’s a disconnect somewhere in the execution that prevents Sabrina from becoming anything really special.

Sabrina Fairchild is the daughter of a modest chauffer, who works for the powerful Larrabee family. Growing up, she has always been in love with the younger of the Larrabee boys, David (played by Greg Kinnear), who has never so much as noticed her. After spending time in France, she returns to the Larrabee estate a fashionable and sophisticated woman. David is smitten with her but this is no good for business. David is already engaged to a woman from a powerful family who is in the process of merging with the Larrabee Corporation. Shrewd businessman and David’s elder brother, Linus (Harrison Ford) takes it upon himself to woo Sabrina away from his brother so the marriage and merger will not be harmed.

Ford is charming as ever as Linus Larrabee and Greg Kinnear pulls off the love-struck brother well enough but Julia Ormond fails to perform as the titular Sabrina. Perhaps it’s because Ormond, at 30 years old, is supposed to be playing a girl in her early 20s. She clearly doesn’t look that young. Perhaps this was a necessity to help mask Ford’s age (already in his early 50’s at the time). Either way, it’s pretty obvious that there is a large age difference between Sabrina and Linus and this makes it hard to buy the chemistry and romance to develops between them. Sure, older men fall for young women all the time but even as charming as Ford is, it’s hard to see Sabrina give up her doting on David for his older brother.

Ford and Kinnear have some amusing scenes together but Kinnear’s wide-eyed, idealistic attitude does grow to be a bit annoying before he snaps out of it at the end. He and Ford end up switching places on the spectrum, swapping capitalism for romanticism and vice versa. It’s the kind of convenient ending that worked back in the escapist cinema of the 40s and 50s but it just doesn’t resonate with modern audiences.

Women will likely enjoy the romance and sweetness but there is very little that is memorable about Sabrina. There’s no unique camerawork to speak of, few memorable lines and no standout performances. All you get is a marginally good time that comes and goes.

RATING: 3 out of 5

First Knight (1995)

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

I don’t know if this has come up yet, so I want to share something with you: I am not a big Richard Gere fan, so many of his films I see are likely to have their ratings tainted by subjectivity. Just a fair warning. Anyway, First Knight falls into some of the standard pitfalls that King Arthur films succumb to, but it goes further than other interpretations do in getting things horribly wrong.

Many Arthur films screw up in a number of excusable areas. First, they typically set the Arthur story too far into the Middle Ages, with shining armor, valiant knight and glorious castles. In fact, Arthur existed in the 5th or 6th Century when things were not as opulent and glamorous as the romanticized tales have led many to believe.

Secondly, most Arthur films really overdo the kinship of the Round Table. Depictions of gorgeous stone or wooden tables abound and the knights were all dashingly handsome. In reality the round table probably didn’t even exist. The knights were really a kind of rag-tag band of wandering men who fought for justice. Their relationship was probably close, but not as glorious as we’ve come to believe.

Finally, almost all Arthur films, and most films with knights and swords, use horrible swordplay for their fight scenes. As heavy and cumbersome as real swords would have been, the parrying and quick swordsmanship defies physics. It’s all stage and film trickery meant to make the fights look cool and more dangerous.

But like I said, all of these items are excusable because they have been commonplace in presentations of the Arthur legend for quite some time. First Knight has bigger problems on its hands.

For starters, Gere plays Lancelot very poorly. Gere is only 5’11” and many of the actors in the film are of a comparable height. Guinevere is only a few inches shorter than Lancelot, though you can hardly tell because of her hair and all. King Arthur is several inches taller than Lancelot, which is a historical no-no. Lancelot, by legend, was a very tall man, towering above many of his peers. This little goof really jars your suspension of disbelief if you know your Arthur at all.

Along with Gere’s height, his performance of Lancelot is completely void of any accent. Literally every single character but Lancelot speaks in an appropriate British accent. The fact that Gere refuses to even try to pull off an accent is a major point of contention with me. They have voice coaches for a reason. Use them.

The dialogue is very wooden, unsatisfying and predictable. This is a huge detriment because most Arthur stories include very beautiful prose and really capture the beauty of the romanticized Arthur legend. This is compounded by the fact that the acting is rather unbalanced. Some actors perform up to par, but most either overact or under-act their roles. This leads to a bizarre up and down feeling when processing the lines.

The special effects and stunts are all a little to modern as well. Camelot is presented as a gigantic city with opulent towers and brilliant colors. It’s all too over the top and came right out of left field for me. A stunt involving a runaway carriage was also rather hokey. It was essentially set up as a medieval car chase, with all the predictable elements of the bad guy jumping on top, crashing through windows and breaking off of doors. Sorry, been there and done that a hundred other times without the added cheese of a medieval setting. There was also a gauntlet prop that Gere ran through in exchange for a kiss from Guinevere that was easily far beyond the design of anything from the Middle Ages.

The love story is altogether unconvincing and they go about Arthur’s death all wrong. Somehow, the writers found it a bright idea to have Arthur snuffed out by relatively minor character from Arthurian legend. The man, Malagant, never amounted to beans in Arthur histories and his position as an evil conqueror and murderer was just confusing.

In the end, First Knight gets a lot of things all wrong, but still manages to look pretty. Ironically, many of the castle locations are shot as old and overgrown with vegetation even though these structures would have been new at the time. Girls will swoon over the sappy love story and guys will sit there with a glazed look on their faces. While it doesn’t quite do enough damage to itself to drop too far in my rankings, I would advise against seeing this film unless you seek an example of how not to present the Arthur legend.

RATING: 2.25 out of 5