Hopelessly devoted

Sigh. I bloody hate it when I have to choose between my heart and my head. This was my dilemma with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. My common sense, my sensibilities, everything cerebral, was in screaming agony throughout the sometimes quite arduous 163 minutes of David Fincher’s latest movie. On the other hand, my heart was melting into the thick layers of treacle the film trowels on to the audience.

Based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the movie tells the story of the titular character (played by Brad Pitt) who ages in reverse. More specifically, he is born with the medical complaints, internal organs, looks and skin of an old man, but without the experience and physical size that his body’s age entails. As he goes through life he grows physically younger. The only time his body and his mind physically match is when he is about 40.

He falls in love with a couple of girls, and seems to live a thousand life times. He has an affair with a married English ex-pat in Russia (played by Tilda Swinton), and has a on/off relationship with his childhood sweetheart (played by Cate Blanchett). He sails the seas in a boat, and rides a motorbike like James Dean. He travels to far off lands to find himself.

It’s a strange odyssey, and one that models itself equally on Forrest Gump than on its source material. The plot interweaves itself amongst historical and cultural events like World War Two, the Beatles, the space age of the 1960s and, eventually, Hurricane Katrina. Characters come and go with careless abandon, like the historical events back flipping through the film. Like the Gump, it’s chocolate box Americana; all set to a syrupy soundtrack and looking good enough to eat.

This is part of its problem. A film trying to encapsulate its time simply cannot include everything, and omissions will be made. It’s going to be arbitrary. Also, to complicate things, it’s a film which is at once cod-philosophical, fable-esque and romantic. However, it becomes problematic when casualties of its ambition include such notable omissions as any kind of racial tension. This is despite being set throughout the twentieth century in the Deep South. Likewise, there is no mention of the Cold War, the effect of the 60s on America, any talk of the aftermath of WW2. It’s incredibly insular and self-absorbed for something consciously set to the backdrop of history.

On a less extraneous level, it also suffers from a lack of sense, of focus. Frequently the story focuses on Cate Blanchett’s character rather than Brad Pitt’s. We are never sure who the real victim of the situation is. If it’s Brad, then his ‘degeneracy’ into adolescence and childhood at the end of the film nullify, or at least bluntens, his tragedy. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t love in the same way as he did any more. Likewise, Blanchett’s narrative is confused. We are not told what happens in her life after Button and before her deathbed revelations. It’s a blank. But it matters if we are to believe its her tragedy. We need to know the effect Button has on her.

Yet, don’t Cate and Brad make a gorgeous couple? Isn’t their romance beautifully, yet inevitably, tragic? Isn’t aging a horrible thing? Look how unsightly Cate and Brad can be when they’re all wrinkly. Truly the worst tragedy of them all.

It’s easy to be seduced by the film’s wishy-washy middle-brow pseudo-philosophical charm. Its gorgeous cinematography, the, admittedly, quite incredible special effects that see Brad aging. It’s all compelling stuff, I admit. The film, however, is so half-baked in its history, and so faulty in its storytelling, I could never believe in whatever reality it is trying to construct. It’s a struggle to get through.