It's that time of year again. You know, when all the movies that were released just in time to fall under Oscar consideration are finally hitting nationwide theaters. There are some doozies out there -- great depressive masterpieces about war and relationships and all that other grand, maudlin stuff that wins awards: The Wrestler, a grainy Aronofsky faux-biopic of a has-been wrestler; Gran Torino, another gritty Eastwood drama about a racist oldie who ends up protecting his Asian neighbors; Milk, about a pioneering gay politician who gets killed; Doubt, about some nuns going after a possibly perverted priest; The Reader, in which Winslet is a Nazi; and Revolutionary Road, in which Winslet is an unhappy suburbanite.
And I should see all of them. Also, because of this particular forum, I feel a strange obligation to see them. But I never do. I just have a hard time exposing myself to all that dreariness. Especially all of them in the same month.
So yesterday, when Bree proposed seeing something, I was all ready to pull a double or triple feature. But what to see? I decided that I couldn't see two depress-athons in a row, so I said, "hey, let's see The Spirit, and then a depressing one after that." The Spirit had received some truly awful reviews, and I usually am titillated by the possibility of liking a movie everyone else hates. Plus, all indications were that Frank Miller's new one was going to be at least visually similar to his last one, Sin City, and I liked that, so how bad could it be?
OK, so then which depressing one to pair it with? My first thought was Doubt, mostly because I thought it might be more thrilling than depressing. But then I changed my mind, because, through no fault of my own, I already pretty much knew everything that happens in it. So instead of that, I said, "let's see Gran Torino," mostly because the trailer didn't really reveal the resolution of the conflict, and the potential for surprise was enough of an incentive for me. So it was settled.
So we saw The Spirit, and hopefully Bree will review it (if not, I eventually will). But then there was about a forty minute wait until Gran Torino, so I proposed walking into the beginning of the film that's at the top of the heap of the awards season crop, and the eventual focus of this review: Benjamin Button. In it you've got all the elements of big-time Oscar bait: An amazing director (David Fincher), a huge star (Brad Pitt), an epic plot, star-crossed lovers, death, dying, and WWII sequences. It's even three hours long! So the movie started and I leaned over to Bree and said: "If you like it, and want to stay, we can pull a Ratatouille*"And lo! For we did indeed pull a Ratatouille and spent the next forty-five minutes enjoying ourselves with hearty laughs and full smiles, watching the antics of a little-boy-sized old man with Brad Pitt's face in a picturesque New Orleans retirement home.
But then something totally expected happened: he grew up, and got "younger." I put that in quotes because it's not really aging backwards -- Benjamin comes out baby-sized and baby-minded, but wrinkled and with arthritis. But then he gets physically larger ("grows up") and mentally becomes more mature as he gets "younger." Unfortunately, as he ages, the movie gets harder and harder to endure (perhaps like life itself?), and by the final hour, I was ready to blow my brains out, and Bree was considering walking into the end of Gran Torino just to get away.
The reason the movie becomes progressively unbearable is that nothing really happens. His childhood is fairly nice and he never really undergoes any significant hardship, except watching some people get killed on a boat during WWII and being lonely in Russia for a couple years. You're essentially watching the story of someone who gets the worst, most painful part of life over with right away, with the love and support of a wonderful family. Then he starts getting younger, and as he becomes more mentally mature -- he makes good friends and has adventures. Then he gets younger and inherits a fortune from his biological father, and then he can do anything he wants -- dates a variety of women, travels extensively, etc. Then he finally is reunited with the one girl he's always inexplicably been in love with, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), and we have to witness several montages of their generic bliss (laying on the beach making love, pillow fights, intermittent giggling and caressing). Then after getting everything he's ever wanted, he leaves her.
You're basically watching the life story of someone -- anyone. There's not much remarkable about him. He doesn't really do anything -- he never really has a job -- he joins the tugboat crew for fun and adventure, but never has to work. Even though his early years were a little more difficult than normal, he has a nice family and a supportive community. He's on a boat that gets shot up in WWII, but most people who lived during this time have a similar experience. There's just not that much special about him once he leaves the old people's home.
So basically, the movie is one long, tiresome effort to trick you into thinking there's something going on. It's like The Sims, that infamous videogame where you make a fully-simulated person, get him a job, and then follow him along all his daily tasks, micromanaging his bowel movements, entertainment choices, and interpersonal contact. This is the game where, in a nightmare of postmodernism gone awry, you can actually make your Sim sit down at the computer and watch him do exactly what you're doing -- playing a videogame. Benjamin Button is the film version of the Sims. It's you wasting three hours of your life watching Benjamin just walk through his.
Oh, and then the finale. So what happens when he gets old and dies? Does he stay large and just become more infantile until he dies? Does he retain his mental age as he gets physically younger? Or does he get small again? Benjamin seems to think he knows, despite the fact that he knows nothing about the nature of this strange phenomenon, nor has he ever seen a doctor about what it is, or if it's even treatable. Instead, at the prime of his life, when he and Daisy are about the same age, he decides to leave her, because "I don't want you to have to raise me" and "I can't be a father and a child at the same time." So he disappears and leaves his loving wife behind without a tear or anguish. How many of us would pick up and leave our perfect lives at the age of 45 or so, because at some unknown point in the future, our aging will make it hard on our loved ones??? Because our aging will be hard on our loved ones -- that's aging. Whether it is forward or backwards. Jeesh. What a coward Benjamin Button was.
The movie's screenwriter is Eric Roth, who wrote Forrest Gump. Even if I didn't know this before seeing Benjamin Button, I would have been able to tell -- the movies are very similar. Both Benjamin and Forrest grow up with a disability in a the gothic South; both have a childhood love whose life interlaces with his, until they eventually get together; both end up going to war and making good friends with a captain (of sorts). Both films are narrated from a point in the future -- Forrest tells the story of his life on a bench to multiple strangers, and Benjamin's story is told in his own words, by way of a diary that Daisy's daughter reads to Daisy on her deathbed. Both even have a floating symbol of life -- Forrest's feather and Benjamin's hummingbird. There are really only two differences: Forrest interacts with history more, and experiences more hardships.
Oh, and Forrest is not a coward.
* In the lexicon of our household, "Pulling a Ratatouille" is choosing to finish watching a movie you began watching (but didn't really want to see) to pass the time before another movie, which you really did want to see (but which you end up missing). I can't remember what we were going to see, but, needless to say, we saw Ratatouille instead.
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