Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and the David Fincher movie ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’

Imagine a three time Academy Award winning romantic drama mixed with fantasy narrated from 2005 New Orleans, Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina is coming. Imagine now a story loosely inspired by a 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald wherein a central character ages in reverse. Mix in the atmosphere and direction of David Fincher, and you get a movie that really intrigues with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).

(Elias Koteas as Monsieur Gateau in the David Fincher movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

The initial task for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was to introduce the odd relationship with time that would be central to the case of Benjamin Button, the character to be portrayed largely by Brad Pitt. An assist was offered by Peter Donald Badalamenti II, Robert Towers, Tom Everett, Spencer Daniels, Chandler Canterbury and Charles Henry Wyson through the aging that Benjamin experienced through the telling of the story. This notion of something fantastic through time is introduced with blind clockmaker Monsieur Gateau, as portrayed by Elias Koteas. The telling of Benjamin Button’s life begins here through the diary that Caroline, as portrayed by Julia Ormond, is asked by Daisy, as portrayed by Cate Blanchett, to read.

(From left, Jason Flemyng as Thomas Button and David Jensen as the doctor at Benjamin’s birth in the David Fincher movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button therein begins with the backwards clock of memory. Benjamin Button is born as a man whose body shows several afflictions associated with old age in his infant’s body. Thomas Button, as portrayed by Jason Flemyng, finds this development in his son ghastly and responds emotionally, abruptly and quite nearly in a manner most shocking. The salvation for the child is that the elder Button takes mercy of the sort wherein the child is left to a circumstance that allows the story to continue.

(From left, Taraji P. Henson as Queenie and Mahershala Ali as Tizzy in the David Fincher movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

It is compassion that convinces Queenie, as portrayed by Taraji P. Henson, to claim the child she names Benjamin as her own. The choice is made while a further choice was being offered by Tizzy, as portrayed by Mahershala Ali, was also on the table. It is paradoxically in the nursing home where Queenie raises the old yet young Benjamin that, at age seven, Benjamin meets Daisy. This lifelong friendship formed in this nursing home becomes a central chorus revealed in what Daisy knew and Caroline and we learn through the film. Cate Blanchett is joined by Elle Fanning and Madisen Beaty in portraying Daisy. Joeanna Sayler and Katta Hules join Julia Ormond in portraying Caroline.

(From left, Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button and Tilda Swinton as Elizabeth Abbott in the David Fincher movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

It is following that initial meeting as children that the story of Benjamin and Caroline take their separate ways. Benjamin leaves New Orleans for a work on a tugboat crew with Captain Mike Clark while Caroline goes to New York City, New York to pursue a dance career. Both learn ways of the world, with Benjamin striking up a needed yet unmentionable relationship with Elizabeth Abbott, as portrayed by Tilda Swinton. Jared Harris portrayed Captain Mike Clark.

(From left, Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button and Cate Blanchett as Daisy in the David Fincher movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

The exposition of the lives of Benjamin, Daisy, Queenie, Tizzy, and the larger world as experienced in World War Two, Japan, Germany, France and through the years leading to New Orleans in 2005 grants much in the way of romance, drama, and larger lessons about life when looking at life unfolded when told from the point-of-view of lives aging in two separate directions. The Eric Roth screenplay combined with an assist on the story from Robin Swicord offers a sweet rendering of the romantic side of the larger tale being told with perspectives for the male and female leads expressed on equal terms.

(From left, Cate Blanchett as Daisy and Julia Ormond as Caroline in the David Fincher movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

A larger theme of this movie, starting with the backward running clock of Monsieur Gateau, was the memorial made to World War One soldiers lost in that war. The notion of the memorial was that the soldiers losing their lives in that war, including Gateau’s son, could come home again and live full lives. This in a sense was the story of Daisy and Benjamin as spoken through the course of the movie. The telling of the relationship Benjamin Button had with his father Thomas Button, and with Queenie, and that Daisy aims to complete for Caroline as the hurricane comes to take the magic of backwards time, is where the curious beauty of the story finds its feet. It is with these elements in mind that I grant The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 4.25-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Tom Cruise and the film ‘Vanilla Sky’

Interested in a trippy movie with some top-rated movie stars? Do you like the multi-layered revelation structure of a movie like Inception (2010)? Are dream-involved movies of the subconscious mixed with love, such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) of interest? Are movies involving dreams of love the hope for better your thing, including the movie What Dreams May Come (1998)? If you’ve answered yes to more than one of the above, then the movie Vanilla Sky (2001) just might be the movie for you.

(Penélope Cruz as Sophia Serrano, left, and Tom Cruise as David Aames).

Tom Cruise stars opposite Penélope Cruz and Cameron Diaz in a movie that may have been a bit ahead of its time. Cameron Crowe directed Vanilla Sky, which performed much better with audiences then it did with critics at the time it was released.

(Cameron Diaz as Julie Gianni)

Cruise is the clear movie lead who portrays a self-indulgent, vain publishing magnate who inherited his publishing house after the death of his parents in an automobile accident. We first meet the character David Aames as he expresses his so-called friendship with Julie Gianni. The scene is a foreshadowing of the story to be revealed later, which now leads us to David’s friend Brian Shelby, portrayed by Jason Lee.

(Jason Lee as Brian Shelby).

It is Brian, aspiring actor by trade and under the influence of his friend David, who introduces David to Sophia Serrano, played by Penélope Cruz. David feels like he’s in a dream, yet immediately expresses his interest in Sophia at David’s birthday party. Within a small period of screen time, the love triangle of David, Julie, and Sophia is established with Brian as the wannabe love interest for both Julie and Sophia to boot.

(Kurt Russell as McCabe)

The love triangle continues to play out as we learn that David is under legal suspicion. We see David in a jail circumstance with McCabe, portrayed by Kurt Russell, trying to get David to share the details for an unknown murder that hangs over David’s head. In the course of this, we get some of the backstory for how David came into his publishing empire, in addition to the fact of Thomas Tipp, portrayed by Timothy Spall, supporting David against an aggressive board of directors out to gain control of the publishing house that David controls.

(Tom Cruise as David Aames, left, and Timothy Spall as Thomas Tipp).

All this is background to plot questions that take the audience into questions of physical attraction, friendship, intimacy, loyalty, promises, and the nature of what each of these demands within the context of a relationship. These questions are all part of the larger questions of the movie, especially of what life has to offer as well as your role in seeking it.

(Noah Taylor as Edmund Ventura).

The questions, after many layers of Vanilla Sky try to speak of questions about mental health, interpersonal relationships, and even the Me Too Movement of a later prominence than the period when this film takes place. In the context of Me Too, Vanilla Sky does not hold up well on all scores. (That is a different blog to be explored later). In the context of the movie, Noah Taylor as Edmund Ventura helps bring clarity to the outer most frame of the movie’s narrative.

Due to the multiple layers of the movie when it was released, my instinct is that many critics of this movie at the time of release inappropriately undervalued the quality of the issues raised and the subject matter explored. Many of the questions indicated were and are socially important. The questions raised in the places where the movie leads are hard, unpleasant, and raise decidedly unpleasant feelings and thoughts in the audience. A 2001 movie audience may not have been ready for these questions. Critics at the time seem to have been.

Blog friend Cobra rates this movie quite highly. My guess is that this has to do with the narrative structure, the emotional questions raised, and the mystery of the layering of the answers to the questions raised. It is with these points in mind that I will rate Vanilla Sky higher that many did at the time of the film’s 2001 release. Acknowledging that the film is challenging in some ways for some audiences is also fair. That all said, I rate this film 3.75-stars out of 5.

Matt – Saturday, December 1, 2018