A Gorgeous and Experiential Commentary on Life and Death

It's hard to wonder why some people, and in particular and especially film critics, would insist that their good movies have to be about "great figures," "heroes," "hallucinatory beauty" to be good as opposed to presenting a geniune slice of life drama to be meaningful, valuable, and enduringly well received. Whether or not World War II and the bombing of Pearl Harbor was a "great event" that is part of this movie (which some might deny), I shall leave to the reader. Nevertheless, how World War II was used in this movie as a backdrop was in some ways much more intriguing and impressive than other war movies. It allowed the event to enhance the more fascinating personal experience than the having the event itself become a major part of the movie and thus competing for attention. This movie beckons to the everyman/woman particularly during this difficult period of time for not all of us can be "heros" but hopefully most of us can be "survivors."

David Fincher (as director) along with Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and Tilda Swinton present a gorgeous and spectacularly photographed movie (especially its use darkness and lightness) in this epic, span of life of an unusual person who experiences the depths of life and death all around him, something very timely in our contemporary, aging society. The audience gets to experience the delicious innocence of growing up and the highs and lows of emotional bliss and tragedy. Mr. Pitt as Benjamin is both an observer and participant in this long, 166 minute movie that sped along timelessly. Personally, one of my top ten movies of the year, this expansion on Lost in Translation (2003) format breathes new life in a compelling focus on a personal life drama rather than the convoluted, intellectual persuit of controversy and mayhew.

For those that found Brad Pitt's performance in Meet Joe Black (1998) "bland" and "cloying" may have been unable to experience the subtle brilliance of this performance as Death himself and like this performance, Mr. Pitt is able to present as Benjamin a certain restrained emotional screen presence but that still belies an expanded emotional range if only can be open to experiencing it. His performance as Benjamin reflects not acting the dramatic, heroic, or spectacular but performing in the role as a person, someone that the audience can actually relate to and identify with which is all the more amazing and fascinating because of his peculiar life of aging backwards.

This movie does not appear to be any "conceptual game" rather an immersion into important themes of the cycle of life, important emotional feelings and a glimpse into the nature and experience of relationships and how one may handle them. These are depictions of what many of us real people ponder, wonder about, fantasize, and if lucky are able to truly experience them for ourselves. It is the presentation and thrilling experience of the very "mundane" that offers us a measure of just how good this movie actually is.

Some might say that Benjamin didn't do "anything particularly interesting," yet I would beg to differ on this account. This movie is about the simple pleasures, about life experiences. Benjamin met many fascinating people, mostly elderly who had curious stories to tell or words of wisdom to impart. Benjamin travelled to places most of us have not and will never travel, but only imagine. Most of us will never get to experience being in the close presence of a person with obvious talent and fame. And probably and most likely unknown to any of us would be living our lives physically getting younger rather than older and if this "one single difference" in this movie might be considered "not interesting," I don't know what else there might be.

Was there any artistic or thematic reason why Benjamin dropped out of the film as he got younger and then show up 10 to 15 years later? Or was the problem that Brad Pitt could not have acted the part? I thought it would have been interesting to see a 16 year old with the mindset of a 70 year old. However, you could not act that with special effects.

quote:

laughingstock
Upwardly Mobile Participant
Posted 26 January 2009 12:21 AM
On the topic of the similarity between Benjamin Button and Lost In Translation:

Tabuno, I can understand where you're coming from with the "slice of life" aspect of things; both films do capture ordinariness quite well (although these are hardly the only two films made in the past 10 years which deal with such a topic). However, I will contest the statement that Benjamin Button is a better (or, at least, more interesting) film. Both do deal with characters being forced into a situation and place which they are unfamiliar with; however, the characters in Lost In Translation react to their surroundings: a good portion of the film is devoted to their sense of culture clash. The character of Benjamin, on the other hand, encounters various characters and locales but just seems to float through them - they don't seem to have much effect on him at all.

The other problem is that while Benjamin Button does do a good job of showcasing the ordinary, it is billed, as a film, as the exact opposite: it is a "curious case." By definition, something out of the ordinary (other than the gimmick of him aging backwards, which also has almost no effect on him. He certainly never questions it) should have occurred. Lost in Translation, on the other hand, never tries to make itself out to be anything more than it actually is.

I'm not "laughing" , but I enjoyed reading your commentary. It was delightfully revealing, informative, and gracefully presented. I liked the idea of the conflict between how the movie was presented and what the movie actually presented. You gave me some material to ponder here.

quote:

Originally posted by laughingstock:
the gimmick of him aging backwards, which also has almost no effect on him. He certainly never questions it

That's another problem I had with the film. Not only does he not really question the backwards aging, no one does, other that a "Oh my, you're gettin' younger, while everyone else is gettin' older," (said in thick New Orleans accent).

I would've thought you'd work the whole backward aging thing into the story a bit. You know, like the portal into John Malkovich's brain in Being John Malkovich. But as it stands, they just took what should've been an interesting character, and threw him into a completely ordinary situation.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: EricG75,

On the topic of the similarity between Benjamin Button and Lost In Translation:

Tabuno, I can understand where you're coming from with the "slice of life" aspect of things; both films do capture ordinariness quite well (although these are hardly the only two films made in the past 10 years which deal with such a topic). However, I will contest the statement that Benjamin Button is a better (or, at least, more interesting) film. Both do deal with characters being forced into a situation and place which they are unfamiliar with; however, the characters in Lost In Translation react to their surroundings: a good portion of the film is devoted to their sense of culture clash. The character of Benjamin, on the other hand, encounters various characters and locales but just seems to float through them - they don't seem to have much effect on him at all.

The other problem is that while Benjamin Button does do a good job of showcasing the ordinary, it is billed, as a film, as the exact opposite: it is a "curious case." By definition, something out of the ordinary (other than the gimmick of him aging backwards, which also has almost no effect on him. He certainly never questions it) should have occurred. Lost in Translation, on the other hand, never tries to make itself out to be anything more than it actually is.

quote:

EricG75
"Forum Moderator"
Super Bad-Ass Jedi
Posted 22 January 2009 09:46 AM

1. WWII was not a "backdrop" of this movie. One scene took place in WWII. It took up about 10 minutes of screentime in a 3 hour movie. It also offered zero commentary on the war.

2. This movie bears no similarities to Lost In Translation. At all. Totally different themes and storytelling techniques.

3. I agree that this film is a technical marvel, but the story itself is crap. It's a run-of-the-mill epic romance that's been filmed 100 times. Only this one features a guy who ages in reverse. It offers nothing new to say about life, love, or death.

4. It's also exactly like Forrest Gump.

I for one will support (this time) the Academy of Motions Pictures nominations for this movie - 13 nominations! This movie must have struck a qualitative chord for some people in the industry.


1. The "ten minute" backdrop of World War II in this movie wasn't about the War directly, but it lend a powerful statement of the oftentimes missed little dramatic and important scenes that played out during this terrible War in many movies about World War II. What makes this brief scene particularly strong was its ability to simultaneously provide the audience with both a statement of the little, important heroic side stories that may have been crucial to the War effort but not given enough credit. At the same time, it provides a perhaps more realistic vision of war than a movie about war because of its briefness and how many times battle actions then took so short a time and then it was over except the suffering or consequences.

2 and 3. Both Benjamin and Lost in Translation were similiar in crucial component of "ordinariness" and the "mundane" of living. In neither movie were there particularly fantastic dramatic, over-glorified, exaggerated scenes of drama, comedy, or mainstream action, thrills, mystery. Each was about just living and experiencing different situations and places and people that most of the rest of us never get to. In Lost in Translation the audience is offered a cultural synthsis of a different place and people and a meeting between a man and a woman in that foreign place (without fanfare, without passionate love or sex) while in Benjamin the audience is offered a period piece of looking back in time, living and experiencing senior citizens and the aging process (without fanfare, without passionate love or sex), the audience experiences the exposure to a foreign land, a quiet affair (not something prurient or crude for the masses), and the audience gets to more tantalizing romantic love than in some ways transcends time and place (but without the normal dynamics and thus offering us a new perspective, a different way of looking at this emotion as well as death). Both are quiet movies really both experiential, and relatively simple on the surface without intellectual mind twisting but just good storytelling leaving the audience with a similar emotional satisfaction of having grown from the experience, having been able to look more deeply into our lives through a different set of lenses. It's been said that most of everything to be said has already been said and that its not what's new about the topic of Life, Love, and Death but how it's achieved, the journey. While Lost in Translation only focused on Life, Benjamin similarly focused on all of the universal topics of Life, Love, and Death making this longer movie all the more impressive.

4. Forrest Gump can be distinguished from Benjamin by the main characters themselves. Tom Hanks played a mentally challenged man, while Brad Pitt played a normal person aging backwards. Tom's character was fantastic and involved the glorification of the simple man amongst historic events, playing on technical special effects to transpose Tom Hanks character into historical places and time recongizable to many people, unlike Brad Pitt's character who took us to ordinary places (if not foreign not infrequently visited places) like Lost in Translation.

1. WWII was not a "backdrop" of this movie. One scene took place in WWII. It took up about 10 minutes of screentime in a 3 hour movie. It also offered zero commentary on the war.

2. This movie bears no similarities to Lost In Translation. At all. Totally different themes and storytelling techniques.

3. I agree that this film is a technical marvel, but the story itself is crap. It's a run-of-the-mill epic romance that's been filmed 100 times. Only this one features a guy who ages in reverse. It offers nothing new to say about life, love, or death.

4. It's also exactly like Forrest Gump.