The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button re-teams actor Brad Pitt with director David Fincher. The duo had previously worked together on such films as Fight Club and Seven. If their previous work is any indication as to how the pair have worked together, then going into “Curious Case…” expectations were certainly high.

            From the opening sequence in a Louisiana hospital room, the gritty darkness incorporated into the scene screams of vintage Fincher. There’s an old woman lying on her deathbed, her daughter staying by her mother’s side until the very end. The old woman has a story to share, a black and white flashback that tells the tale of a blind clock maker who lost his son in World War 1. The clock maker creates a clock the runs backwards and has it hung in a busy train station, the significance is that perhaps if time moves backwards, those that had lost something or someone would be able to rewind time themselves, and recover what they had lost.

            Thus, the movie begins. It turns out that the story the old woman has told to her daughter is significant because the woman carries with her a diary belonging to one named “Benjamin Button”. Benjamin was a different sort of person in that he spent his entire life, aging backwards. The diary is his life’s work, recounted by Button himself, and done so prior to becoming an adolescent and forgetting everything that had happened. The film’s plot is told through this diary, with narration by actor Pitt playing the lead role of Benjamin Button. It is a story based upon the short one of the same name written by famous author F. Scott Fitzgerald.

            Cate Blanchett, like director Fincher, re-teams with Pitt and she plays Benjamin’s love interest “Daisy”. Blanchett and Pitt last worked together in the film, Babel playing a husband and wife pair. Benjamin and Daisy hit it off right from the start, which is odd because when they first meet, Daisy is very young. As a viewer, we know that Benjamin Button is only eight years old but says so himself that, he “looks a lot older”. Daisy seems to see past his age and they become instant friends. As Benjamin ages and gets younger and younger he continues to seek out his one true love no matter where she is on the globe. Blanchett is, with her curvy dark eyes and creamy white skin tone, once again superb in her part. She continues with this role, to be one of the better actresses working in Hollywood today.

            Other cast members of note include, Tilda Swinton, who since playing the White Witch in the “Chronicles of Narnia,” seems to only be able to play bored housewives looking to commit adultery. She played the same part in the Cohen Brothers recent film, Burn After Reading while going after George Clooney. And she finds love in the arms of Brad Pitt in “Button” playing bored wife, Elizabeth Abbott, whom Benjamin believes to be his first real love. (Apparently not realizing the feelings he had for Daisy all along). She seems to have lost all sense of meaning in her life once she was unable to be the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Jared Harris of Mr. Deeds plays Captain Mike, seemingly the most masculine male influence in all of Benjamin Button’s life. It’s everything that Captain Mike is not, that Benjamin seems to love and respect him for.

            The story is captivating. Here is truly a film that keeps you watching for three hours, without having much action to show for it. The acting is great, and Brad Pitt should get a nod for a nomination in the“Best Actor” category during awards season this year. If Pitt does get nominated, than he and wife Angelina Jolie (Changeling) may both be up for a trophy. Those who should win some awards is who ever did the special effects for this film- the make up and aging done to the characters is absolutely flawless. Second to none! 

One of, if not the best, film of 2008!

Does "Valkyrie" Cruise Along?

            Tom Cruise is on the move to resurrect his career. Funny, that the crowned King of Scientology needs to rise from the dead like a certain Christian deity that he has chosen to rebuke. The move for a career shake up should be obvious. First he dabbled in comedy by portraying an over-worked and over-weight movie producer in Ben Stiller’s summer comedy “Tropic Thunder”. For the first time in his career Tom asked us to laugh with him. The only time he’d ever asked us as fans to do that was when he played Austin Powers in the in-movie movie preview they showed during Austin Powers 3.

            Now, in “Valkyrie” Tom Cruise shifts us back to his dramatic side. His turn as real-life historical figure Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is once again against the grain of Cruise’s past normalcy.  Cruise plays the part well enough, however the movie falls into a great many pit falls.

            First and most importantly, “Valkyrie” is supposed to take place in Adolf Hitler’s World War 2 Germany. Why, director Bryan Singer (“X-Men” and “Superman Returns”) decided to cast not only Cruise, but also a bevy of thick accented and recognizable Brits is beyond any all comprehension. In fact the only instance in the entire film when any actors (Including David Bamber as Hitler himself) even speak a hint of German- in the very opening of the movie, where Claus von Stauffenberg is writing an entry into his journal.  Normally, we go to films to escape reality- and therefore the fact that this movie isn’t exactly accurate shouldn’t bother you. However, this is a true story. Wouldn’t you think the director and those involved would want to stay as true to the source as possible?

            As stated, almost every actor besides Cruise will make you do a double take, and spend at least thirty seconds trying to decide what other movies you’ve seen them in. There’s Bill Nighy (“Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Underworld”), there is Kenneth Branagh (“Harry Potter”), Tom Wilkinson (“The Patriot”, “Batman Begins” and “Michael Clayton”), Terence Stamp (“Star Wars”), Kevin McNally (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) and even Tom Hollander (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) just to name a few. There are others!

It is the belief of this critic that “Valkyrie” would have been better portrayed as an indie-film using actual German actors speaking in German, with subtitles used at the bottom of the screen. The actors in this movie didn’t even look like they were German. I saw a better Hitler portrayed in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.

            The other pit fall the film has is that any movie that is historically accurate means that the audience, unless not educated in the event, already knows how it’s going to end. “Valkyrie” is a movie about one of the many assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler’s life. If you’ve been to school, or at least never have lived under a rock- than you know going into it, that Hitler was never assassinated. If you do that math- than all you really need to do is sit through the first three quarters of the film and then imagine the rest.

            All of that being said, there are some suspenseful scenes throughout the film, which for a film labeled as a suspense-drama, is a good thing. Also for me, admittedly though I knew the eventual outcome I was not fully aware of everything in between so the film did get a bit befuddling at times when they were throwing out names of new characters, or group planning together. It was a nice when they explained everything by going step by step through their master plan.

            “Valkryie” is a film that doesn’t have to be seen in theatres for a $10 price tag plus popcorn. It’s not the movie that is going resurrect Tom Cruise’s career. You’re not going to leave the theatre a changed person. You’re not going to ever have to see it again and again. You’re never going to need to own it in your personal collection and you might not even recommend it to friends. But if you’re a history buff, a war movie buff, or even if you’ve seen everything else and want to go catch another- “Valkryie” will entertain you. I supposed, in the end, that’s all you can really ask for from a film.