As per my goal to write every second Debrief on a film from someone else’s recommendation, I asked for input on Twitter just as I did last month. I got quite a few suggestions and was stuck with the problem of which one to choose. I ultimately went with @gbellddsc’s recommendation of David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button because, to be fair, I didn’t like the film when I first saw it in theatres. But I had not seen the film since that first viewing and I figured that if I was encouraging other people to give films a second chance that I should take some of my own advice. As I popped the DVD into my player last week, I was hoping the second viewing would help me see what Graham found so beautiful about the Fincher’s work.
Loosely based around a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I remember one of the reasons for disliking Button was because it seemed like Forrest Gump 2 in that it followed the life of one magnificent man while cataloguing his life around cultural touchstones (in Button’s case, WWII, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, etc — more on cultural touchstones on another Debrief). What I didn’t know at the time was that Eric Roth wrote them both. So one could account that similarity to Roth’s personal style than to simply capitalizing on Gump‘s success. And while I still would not consider Button one of my favourite films, my second look at the film has shown me a film much more worthy of discussion and contemplation than I initially gave it credit for. Perhaps you saw it when it first came out because of your adoration of Brad Pitt, or perhaps because of the plethora of nominations it received for the 2009 Academy Awards, but whether you’ve seen it or not, this week is a prime spot to dedicate some of your time to Fincher’s drama.
The film begins in a hospital room in New Orleans just as Hurricane Katrina is touching down. A middle-aged woman sits at the foot of the bed of her dying mother. The mother, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), has her daughter read from a journal. The entries in the journal tell the story of Benjamin Button’s (Brad Pitt) life. Ben’s mother died giving birth to him and his father took him away and left him on the doorsteps of an old age home. Ben is found and raised at the home by one of the home’s caretakers, Queenie (Taraji Henson). Ben is special because he is born old, the old age home’s doctor doesn’t give him long to live. However, Ben survives and as the years pass, he ages in reverse – his body getting younger. The film tells of all of Ben’s adventures as he gains the wisdom that aging brings while his body progresses back to youth.
One of the pleasant surprises that my second viewing of Button unearthed for me was how well the editing and the script meshed together to present the duality of not just Benjamin’s life, but life in general. The contrasts of existence seemed always co-present. Beyond just the obvious life and death, we are presented with peace and chaos, love and lust, agency and passivity, to name just a few. The result of these contrasts, at least for me, was the truth of how fleeting so many of the greatest qualities of life are; beauty, happiness, satisfaction. From this follows the common lesson of savouring “the moments.”
Even since the early days of Hollywood, there has existed the film that is referred to as the Star Vehicle. First and foremost, films are a business and their producers want them to make money. However, the star system is integral to attracting audiences and the production and maintenance of stars for audiences to obsess over is a critical part of that business. The star vehicle is a film that advances and enhances an actor’s career. Perhaps back in those early days, a star vehicle was used as a launching pad for a certain personality – They were the lead in the film, the audience fell for them and it brought them back film after film to take in that personality. That still happens today. Think of Bradley Cooper in Limitless. Sure, Cooper was in previous television shows and films, but Limitless was his movie – the only actor worth billing on the movie posters and in the trailers, two key factors in marketing a film. However, the star vehicle has progressed beyond that. Now vehicles can be used to take well established actors, like Brad Pitt, and put them in the more opportune situation to earn awards, especially the Academy Awards. Button is definitely one of those vehicles that provided Pitt with an advantageous role that the Academy has looked favourably upon in the past.
Now speaking of actors and vehicles, the wonders of wikipedia have provided me with the perfect opportunity to discuss the-role-that-almost was. The wiki production notes on Button state how long the film was gestating before it came to fruitition. Studios, producers and directors had been toying with varying adaptions of the story since the 80s. Indeed, Tom Cruise has once been cast as Benjamin Button when a previous team had attempted to get the story off the ground. And that got me thinking. How much of a film’s identity is tied to our expectations and feelings towards the actors?
I feel the more I know, the more relevant my Debrief on Smash His Camera becomes. So much of our relationship with a film before we see it, while we watch it, and after, are tied to our fractioned knowledge of the actors. We think we know something about these people, perhaps because they’re so in the spotlight. We judge these people. And they accept it, want it (to a certain extent) because without us and our feverish desire to consume their existence, they wouldn’t have the lavish lifestyle they maintain.
So let’s consider… Brad Pitt played Benjamin Button with reasonable skill. The combination of his acting and the politics of Hollywood wrangled him the best actor nomination. Is it even possible to imagine Tom Cruise as Benjamin? That changes the whole story, doesn’t it? At least, we think it does. Then we consider some of the most culturally significant films of our generation and I bet it boggles the mind (perhaps even makes you laugh) to think about who was originally sought after to play some key roles. Will Smith as Neo in The Matrix! Ethan Hawke as Jack in Titanic!! OJ Simpson as the Terminator!!! (Can you imagine Arnie not having said “I’ll be back”?) Sean Penn instead of Ed Norton in Fight Club!!!! But those never happened and we are left with what actually happened. We assimilate our knowledge of these actors as people and their roles into one persona. To us who look from afar, Brad Pitt is some amalgam of Ben Button and Tyler Durden and Achilles and Rusty Ryan (etc). And our expectations drive us to and from certain films. I find this relationship endlessly fascinating.
Depending on who you ask, one of the impressive feats of Button is that it is a success in digital filmmaking. The film was not shot on celluloid film reel, but using a digital camera. Now I’d argue that some of the effects that the digital camera allows, such as the characters’ aging process, flow seamlessly. Other times, it’s fairly evident that the scene has been manipulated in one sense or another. With digital filmmaking, the only rule is that anything is possible. When you shoot digital, you can create whatever world you want to achieve in post-production. Now one might argue that a story is told either way and that perhaps digital filmmaking allows the imagination to be fleshed out even further. However, I believe, in subtle ways the audience is bound to react emotionally different about, say, a city if they know it is the real city or a computer generated city. I am not opposed to digital filmmaking (some consider it a perversion). But I am aware that it is a different medium and suggest that you recognize the same. The merits of digital and film are worth plenty of debate and could very well be addressed in a later Debrief. What are your thoughts on celluloid vs. digital?
