Was there a more eagerly anticipated post-summer movie than David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Your intrepid writer was himself caught up in the emotional trailer, set to the strains of Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. Never mind that its evocation of one of my favorite films, Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), makes me an easy mark. Or that it is based on a short story by one of my favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Or that Fincher is one of my favorite directors. The film seems to be tailor-made to appeal to the cinema cognoscenti. And is it any coincidence it was released on Christmas Day, allowing it to play for the requisite week in 2008 for it to be nominated come Oscar time?
I was crestfallen after reading Glenn Kenny's review of the film, especially because of the close association he makes between this film and Robert Zemeckis' detestable Forrest Gump (1994). Then it all came flooding back to me. The last time I was this bowled over by a trailer, it had been the one for Gump. I finally saw the movie, despising its facile look at history through the eyes of a dim-witted, folksy, ping-pong champion. But most especially I hated Zemeckis' use of flashy, self-conscious visual effects in scenes like the ones where Gump interacts with JFK or John Lennon. Just hire a frickin' actor for Pete's sake. His insertion of actual footage of these legends actually pulled one out of the film, not into it. The trailer for Button was designed in much the same way as the one for Gump, spotlighting much of the same emotional drama and visual spectacle. Compare both below:
As Mitch Lewis, points out in a comment posted after Kenny's review, Eric Roth's screenplay even seems like an attempt to rework his own previous script for Forrest Gump. Benjamin (Brad Pitt) is a man aging in reverse, born old, getting younger over the course of the film. He falls for a childhood sweetheart, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), who he leaves behind for adventures on a tug boat in the high seas during the war. But with Fincher's usual touch of darkness, the film works to transcend those limitations.
While cockeyed optimism is the flavor of Gump's outlook, Button has a melancholy pessimism enshrouding it, a certain inevitability if you will, that is haunting. Death and the respective shape it takes for each character hangs like a spectre over the film. Whether it is Daisy, on her deathbed, telling Benjamin's story in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina rages outside; or the tugboat's Captain Mike (Jared Harris) defiantly driving his vessel into the rapid-firing shells launched by a German U-boat, Button's unasked question concerns how one faces certain death with dignity. In fact, Fincher's often fog-shrouded images usually underscore the serenity of a peaceful death, echoing another iconic Pitt-starrer, Meet Joe Black (1998). Here are some examples:
Like Joe Black, Benjamin is a cypher, a receptacle for all the lessons he gathers on his journeys from the many lonely travellers on their personal journeys to their end. Pitt's portrayal of Benjamin is wonderful, capturing the poignancy of old age and fusing it with the vitality of youth, in much the same way he did in Joe Black. He beautifully projects childlike wonder when he first joins the tug; at the loss of his virginity in a brothel; at the deep connection he makes with a diplomat's wife (Tilda Swinton) while on his journey. But there is a certain cover-boy quality of blankness he is also able to tap into as the youthful-looking Benjamin rapidly declines towards his cruel death, so effective in a scene where he reunites with Blanchett late into the last third of the film. Benjamin's ultimate fate, performed by a mere infant (with the help of some stunningly subtle visual effects) is most unkind to this gentle sojourner.
I repeat, the visual effects are subtle. Unlike Gump's intrusive depictions of real-life figures, the magical disappearance of wrinkles on Pitt's face (and the careful preservation of his real-life scar) are easy to overlook. Similar effects of youth have been misused by lesser directors such as Brett Ratner, in the opening scene of X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). Fincher wisely uses this effect only in low-lighting situations that both add to the mood and help diminish the dissonance of the effect itself. Yes, there is the generous use of fanciful-looking CGI to create fake landscapes. But it seems to fit within the confines of the tone Fincher is trying to set with this modern fable.
If the film has a fatal flaw it is that it seems a little too calculatedly mindful of Oscar. Like the Frankenstein monster that was Forrest Gump, Button sews together all the qualities that usually appeal most to the Motion Picture Academy: epic scope and length; life-spanning story; protagonist with a disability; unrequited romance; heartfelt reunions, etc. This gives the film a certain polished sheen that somehow renders it a bit hollow.
But Fincher's visual artistry, and Pitt's impressive range serve to lift The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, if not to the level of a cinematic crown jewel, then at least to that of a minor gem.
Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys) is this year's Turkish submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. It has yet to be released in the United States, but it is certainly a movie to keep an eye out for. At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival it won the Best Director Award for Nuri Bilge Ceylan. This is the first film of his that I've been fortunate to see, and it is striking.
Servet (Ercan Kesal) accidentally runs over a man after falling asleep at the wheel. A politician, he is concerned with the effect this incident will have on his upcoming election. He asks his driver, Eyüp (Yavuz Bingöl), to turn himself in for the crime in exchange for hush money. The struggling family man accepts the offer, hoping his son İsmail (Ahmet Rıfat Şungar) will capitalize on this opportunity and try to get accepted into the University. But he is ignorant of the added burden he has placed on his wife, Hacer (Hatice Aslan). And the pressure drives her to commit a fateful betrayal.
Aslan is fascinating to watch as Hacer, the linchpin of this minimalist neo-noir. Hacer is a fading beauty, fading even faster under the burden of holding the family together under their miserable circumstances. Unable to fully control her son from hanging around with the wrong friends, she resigns herself to sleepwalking through her husband's jail time. It is only when she receives a modicum of sexual attention, from an unlikely source, that she is shaken from her reverie. After this, Aslan seems to undergo a physical transformation from handsome woman to quiet femme fatale. In a film almost totally devoid of colors outside the earthy palette, Hacer is suddenly wearing a seductive red nightshirt that even catches her newly-released husband off-guard. She suddenly seems to recall Monica Vitti in an Antonioni film.
A little of that has to do with director Ceylan's style. The film's glacial pace does seem to echo Antonioni. Like in L'Avventura (1960), where a woman's disappearance was the inciting event for some deep introspection on the part of its protagonists (Vitti among those), the jailing of Eyüp, both a sacrifice and an act of complicity, is cause for each of the characters to turn inward ignoring the evil between them in much the same way the titular three monkeys do. And like in Antonioni's films, in the absence of dialogue Ceylan's focus turns to the surrounding environment and ambient sounds.
The sound of the train running outside Eyüp's home is not easily forgotten after seeing Üç Maymun, and just as haunting as the sound of the wind in the trees in the park from Blowup (1966).
There is something sublime about Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino. Maybe it's seeing Eastwood return in front of the camera for a role that goes beyond our meager expectations into more nuanced territory. Or it might be how the film recalls much of his career in some surprising ways that perfectly sum up Eastwood's outlook on life and his career. Either way, Gran Torino is a beautiful Christmas gift from a prolific filmmaker (it's his second film in 3 months) that will prove to be one of the more important benchmarks in his filmography as both an actor and director.
Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, retired, a recent widower, veteran of the Korean War. All indications at the start of the movie are that only his late wife understood him. He is alienated from his two sons and their families. A young priest, Father Janovich (Christopher Carley) is the only one reaching out to him, and that only because of a deathbed promise to Kowalski's wife. Kowalski, an apparently stereotypical "cranky old man", rebuffs him, preferring to rail against the decline of our country, wallowing in his racism, seething at his neighborhood's ghettoization by the influx of Hmong "barbarians". The one thing that seems to inspire pride in Kowalski is a 1972 mint-condition Ford Gran Torino. When Thao (Bee Vang), the Hmong boy next door, attempts to steal it as part of a gang initiation, this sets off a series of events that lead Kowalski to reexamine his hardened attitudes.
Eastwood smartly dances around his tough-guy image to lure us into Torino's story. When he finds Thao breaking in, he corners the boy with his shotgun aimed squarely at him. Confronting the hopeless gang, who are so determined to prove to Thao that he has little chance of escaping his neighborhood that they'll kill to have him join the gang, Kowalski tells them that in Korea he used to stack up bodies of guys like them; use them as sandbags.
You can be forgiven for expecting some Dirty Harry-type heroics at this point, except that Eastwood is smarter than that. Kowalski is lonely, seeking human contact, which he finds from Thao's sister, Sue (Ahney Her), a precocious teen who sees through his gruffness. In fact, an unspoken reason he connects with Sue is a repeated tendency to be more demanding of males than females, so you could add a bit of reverse-sexism to his list of faults. In a sense, Kowalski sees himself in many of the young males in this movie, and either finds them weak and wanting, as he does Thao and Father Janovich, or he punishes them when he sees his own failings magnified and manifested in them, as he does in the Hmong gang members.
After the gang strikes out against his neighbors, Kowalski is unexpectedly cautious for an Eastwood character, waiting for his anger to subside in order to think clearly in calculating the correct degree of retaliation. Like in some of his earlier films, Eastwood explores the pitfalls of using violence to resolve conflicts. He again approaches it through the conduit of a violent man who stands in sharp relief to the weaker folks he must defend. Like Unforgiven's William Munny, Walt Kowalski is haunted by his killing in the past. Like Butch (Kevin Costner) in A Perfect World (1993), Kowalski is conscious of protecting the innocent from harm. And like Jimmy (Sean Penn) in Mystic River (2003), Harry Callahan, and any number of protagonists in Eastwood's films, Kowalski is not above taking matters into his own hands to avenge those in his care. The difference is that Kowalski and Eastwood are older, wiser, nearer to the end of their lives. They realize the consequences both moral and societal of committing murder. Eastwood plays on our expectations surrounding his vigilante persona, and inverts the outcome of the film to great effect.
Gran Torino is an elegy to the gun-toting avenger of Eastwood's past, an exorcism of a persona that, at nearly 80 years of age, marks a rebirth for the actor-director.
Gran Torinois in limited release, and opens across the country on January 9th.
First thing's first. I'd like to wish everyone a happy new year. And thank you for helping make Cinema Viewfinder so successful in its first year. Here's a rundown of some things I thought you would be interested in:
My Best and Worst lists - Everybody loves reading them. I have fun discussing them. So they're definitely on their way. As I've noticed in the last few weeks, a few of my top films for the year have only just recently opened. So the only reason I haven't addressed this yet is that there are still a few straggling 2008 films that have yet to open here in Atlanta that I want to give a fair shot to. As soon as I've seen those, the lists will be up for discussion.
Upcoming Series - After the extremely successful launch of my Seventies Cinema Revival series, it's safe to say I'll be presenting more film retrospectives under that banner. But I also plan on starting a series on Italian cinema with career retrospectives on Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma), and Luchino Visconti (Il Gattopardo), and with the hopes of getting to Bernardo Bertolucci (Il Conformista) as well. And one of these days I'll get back to continuing my Directed By series, if time allows.
Thanks -As you may have noticed on the sidebar, some other sites have praised Cinema Viewfinder lately. I'd like to thank MovieMan0283 at The Dancing Image , Jon Swift at his eponymous blog, Jeremy Richey at Moon in the Gutter, and Tom Watson and his fellow writers at Newcritics for the plugs. I'd also like to thank T.S. at one of my favorite blogs, Screen Savour, for plugging my posts pretty often at his Sunday Matinee feature, as well as Monster7of9 at the Monster Scifi Show Blog who usually plugs any of my science-fiction related posts. Special thanks go to two of my favorite critics, Campaspe the Self-Styled Siren, and Glenn Kenny of Some Came Running for proving to be very accessible mentors in my new venture. Both have been extremely generous with their limited time whenever I've felt the need to call on them.
Two sites that have given me opportunities to reach a larger audience should be mentioned, Blogcritics, and the
LAMB (Large Association of Movie Blogs). Without them, I'd just be spitting in the wind.
Finally, I'd like to encourage all of my readers to support my writing and my site in any or all of the following ways. First, if you need to purchase something at one of the sites advertised here, click on one of the ads to gain access through that portal. Secondly, subscribe to my posts and/or comments at the top left hand corner of the page. You can also become a follower by clicking on the link just below. Lastly, Cinema Viewfinder is updated regularly on Facebook as well, so become a fan of its Facebook page. Any little bit of support helps.
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Was there a more eagerly anticipated post-summer movie than David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Your intrepid writer was himself caught up in the emotional trailer, set to the strains of Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. Never mind that its evocation of one of my favorite films, Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), makes me an easy mark. Or that it is based on a short story by one of my favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Or that Fincher is one of my favorite directors. The film seems to be tailor-made to appeal to the cinema cognoscenti. And is it any coincidence it was released on Christmas Day, allowing it to play for the requisite week in 2008 for it to be nominated come Oscar time?
I was crestfallen after reading Glenn Kenny's review of the film, especially because of the close association he makes between this film and Robert Zemeckis' detestable Forrest Gump (1994). Then it all came flooding back to me. The last time I was this bowled over by a trailer, it had been the one for Gump. I finally saw the movie, despising its facile look at history through the eyes of a dim-witted, folksy, ping-pong champion. But most especially I hated Zemeckis' use of flashy, self-conscious visual effects in scenes like the ones where Gump interacts with JFK or John Lennon. Just hire a frickin' actor for Pete's sake. His insertion of actual footage of these legends actually pulled one out of the film, not into it. The trailer for Button was designed in much the same way as the one for Gump, spotlighting much of the same emotional drama and visual spectacle. Compare both below:
As Mitch Lewis, points out in a comment posted after Kenny's review, Eric Roth's screenplay even seems like an attempt to rework his own previous script for Forrest Gump. Benjamin (Brad Pitt) is a man aging in reverse, born old, getting younger over the course of the film. He falls for a childhood sweetheart, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), who he leaves behind for adventures on a tug boat in the high seas during the war. But with Fincher's usual touch of darkness, the film works to transcend those limitations.
While cockeyed optimism is the flavor of Gump's outlook, Button has a melancholy pessimism enshrouding it, a certain inevitability if you will, that is haunting. Death and the respective shape it takes for each character hangs like a spectre over the film. Whether it is Daisy, on her deathbed, telling Benjamin's story in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina rages outside; or the tugboat's Captain Mike (Jared Harris) defiantly driving his vessel into the rapid-firing shells launched by a German U-boat, Button's unasked question concerns how one faces certain death with dignity. In fact, Fincher's often fog-shrouded images usually underscore the serenity of a peaceful death, echoing another iconic Pitt-starrer, Meet Joe Black (1998). Here are some examples:
Like Joe Black, Benjamin is a cypher, a receptacle for all the lessons he gathers on his journeys from the many lonely travellers on their personal journeys to their end. Pitt's portrayal of Benjamin is wonderful, capturing the poignancy of old age and fusing it with the vitality of youth, in much the same way he did in Joe Black. He beautifully projects childlike wonder when he first joins the tug; at the loss of his virginity in a brothel; at the deep connection he makes with a diplomat's wife (Tilda Swinton) while on his journey. But there is a certain cover-boy quality of blankness he is also able to tap into as the youthful-looking Benjamin rapidly declines towards his cruel death, so effective in a scene where he reunites with Blanchett late into the last third of the film. Benjamin's ultimate fate, performed by a mere infant (with the help of some stunningly subtle visual effects) is most unkind to this gentle sojourner.
I repeat, the visual effects are subtle. Unlike Gump's intrusive depictions of real-life figures, the magical disappearance of wrinkles on Pitt's face (and the careful preservation of his real-life scar) are easy to overlook. Similar effects of youth have been misused by lesser directors such as Brett Ratner, in the opening scene of X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). Fincher wisely uses this effect only in low-lighting situations that both add to the mood and help diminish the dissonance of the effect itself. Yes, there is the generous use of fanciful-looking CGI to create fake landscapes. But it seems to fit within the confines of the tone Fincher is trying to set with this modern fable.
If the film has a fatal flaw it is that it seems a little too calculatedly mindful of Oscar. Like the Frankenstein monster that was Forrest Gump, Button sews together all the qualities that usually appeal most to the Motion Picture Academy: epic scope and length; life-spanning story; protagonist with a disability; unrequited romance; heartfelt reunions, etc. This gives the film a certain polished sheen that somehow renders it a bit hollow.
But Fincher's visual artistry, and Pitt's impressive range serve to lift The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, if not to the level of a cinematic crown jewel, then at least to that of a minor gem.
