The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008, David Fincher)

"Your life is defined by its opportunities... even the ones you miss."

Although The Curious Case of Benjamin Button suffers from a cumbersome and somewhat bland title, but the adjective ‘curious’ perfectly describes the final product. Filmmaker David Fincher made a name for himself as Hollywood’s prince of darkness: the bleak subject matter of his neo-noir thrillers could be matched only by his color palette. His often detached sensibilities made him a strange choice indeed to visualize Eric Roth’s screen adaptation of F.Scott Fitzgerald’s short story. The cradle-to-cradle tale of an oddball loner who ages backward through a tortured lifelong romance, would seem to require the light heart of someone like Spielberg (who not coincidentally was originally attached to the project). Roth’s screenplay achieves little with its potentially intriguing premise, and, as many viewers noted, instead comes across as a generic retread of the chocolate-box life lessons from Roth’s own Forrest Gump, only without the jokes. Fincher’s perfectionist tendencies still ensure that the film impresses on a technical level, using computer graphics masterfully to blur the line that separates special effects from cinematography and makeup. However, the combination of monotone voiceover narration, flat characterizations, ineffective symbolism, and a meandering narrative structure drains the film of whatever visual power it possesses. The script detracts so much that the film’s two-minute teaser trailer, a silent montage of striking images synchronized to “Aquarium: Carnival of the Animals,” remains a significantly stronger artistic achievement than the nearly three-hour film it advertises. The Curious Case deserves credit for replicating a full century of time periods and ages while maintaining a consistent style, but the work still lacks any unifying vision. Perhaps the film, like its protagonist, developed backwards. Benjamin Button began its life as a bloated $100 million blockbuster and a double-digit Oscar contender, instead of growing up naturally from an infant story worth telling.