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

Kevin Costner and seven time Academy Award winning movie ‘Dances with Wolves’

Winning Academy Awards for best picture, director, cinematography, film editing, adapted screenplay, original musical score and sound mixing, Kevin Costner‘s directorial debut was a commercial and mostly critical success. (For criticism on cultural grounds, read point sixteen here). Dances with Wolves (1990) ran for approximately three-hours in theatres and nearly four-hours with the extended cut intended for home viewing.

(From left, Robert Pastorelli as Timmons and Kevin Costner as Lieutenant John Dunbar in the movie Dances with Wolves).

Kevin Costner stars as the character Lieutenant John Dunbar of the American Civil War‘s Union Army whose perspective both narrates and interprets the experience of Dances with Wolves. The film, clearly a western, offers some colorful history for Dunbar that allows the film to unfurl in some form of context that offers a view into the lives of Sioux peoples. The film gets into the serious storytelling of the Sioux culture after arriving at Fort Sedgewick with Timmons, as portrayed by Robert Pastorelli.

(From left, Rodney A. Grant as Wind In His Hair and Graham Greene as Kicking Bird in the movie Dances with Wolves).

The story of Dancing with Wolves revolves largely around getting to understand the lifestyle that was that of the Sioux peoples that lives in part of the Great Plains region of North America. The beginning of that tale in the movie involves the prejudice and stereotypes of the native and emerging United States national culture that will brings with it conflict. Dunbar keeps a diary of the initial perceptions of contact from the perspective of a Union solider. Wind In His Hair, as portrayed by Rodney A. Grant, and Kicking Bird as portrayed by Graham Greene are part of the Sioux perspective.

(From left, Tantoo Cardinal as Black Shawl, Mary McDonnell as Stands With A Fist and Otakuye Conroy as Kicking Bird’s Daughter in the movie Dances with Wolves).

A significant portion of making the larger narrative of the interpersonal, non-historical story of Dances with Wolves emotionally work was a story of romance and physical communication. This placed Stands With A Fist, as portrayed by Mary McDonnell, at the center of two important pieces of that achievement. Getting to know Stands With A Fist at first took interaction with Kicking Bear and Wind In His Hair and Kicking Bird. Kicking Bird’s wife Black Shawl, as portrayed by Tantoo Cardinal, became central to building that story.

(Teddy and Buck as Two Socks – a Wolf in Dances with Wolves).

It took a fair amount of movie time for the notion of why the wolf, a character we came to know as Two Socks, developed some emotional feet. As the backstory for John Dunbar began to lose its meaning, the role of what it meant to be Union soldier gave way to what the day-to-day lifestyle of being Sioux in the community that John Dunbar had found. In a bit of a spoiler, Dunbar had been granted a Sioux name the revealed the budding relationship Dunbar had with the wolf and with the larger Sioux community. After all, Dunbar’s emotional conversion, along with the social meaning of that conversion that is a sore subject of cultural identity and portrayal for some, gets its emotional legs.

(From left, Floyd ‘Red Crow’ Westerman as Ten Bears and Doris Leader Charge as Pretty Shield in the movie Dances with Wolves).

Leadership with the Sioux community that Dunbar took to heart in Dances with Wolves included Chief Ten Bears, as portrayed by Floyd ‘Red Crow’ Westerman and his wife, Pretty Shield, as portrayed by Doris Leader Charge. When the larger narrative for returning the movie to the opening backstory that started the revelation of the Sioux culture had come to pass, know that Ten Bears and his wife and Pretty Shield, along with others, played their part.

(Tony Pierce as Corporal Spivey in the movie Dances with Wolves).

I briefly touched on the Dances with Wolves story of John Dunbar had come to Fort Sedgewick, near modern day Julesburg, Colorado in the northeast part of the state. Corporal Spivey, as portrayed by Tony Pierce, offers something meaningful for the broader brushstrokes of the movie directed by Kevin Costner that were meant to be felt. Michael Blake‘s screenplay and novel helped lead us here. I for one appreciated the story for the lifestyle of the Sioux that was shared. Acknowledging the cultural critique (read point sixteen here) that comes with the Hollywood story, our rating for Dances with Wolves is 4.0-stars on a scale of 1-to-5 stars.

Matt – Saturday, January 2, 2021