Director: David Fincher
Short Story: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Screenplay: Eric Roth
Producers: Ceán Chaffin, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall
Starring (voices of): Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Jason Flemyng, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Tilda Swinton
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running time: 159 min
From time to time around here, whenever a very popular movie is being released, we tend to fight over who gets to write the review. As a compromise, we decided that all of us who saw the film would get to write up a little something; something we call a R3view. Here is a little taste of how each of us felt about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Synopsis (from IMDb): “I was born under unusual circumstances.” And so begins ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: a man, like any of us, who is unable to stop time. We follow his story, set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918 to the 21st century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man’s life can be.
READ THE FULL SHORT STORY HERE
all of our reviews to follow…
JONATHAN:
David Fincher is no stranger to the unconventional story and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is no different. Even with a cast including two of the biggest stars in Hollywood, one must wonder if the studios were hesitant in greenlighting an adaptation of a short story about a fellow who is born old and ages backwards, a romantic drama with one of the most mild-mannered protagonists in recent big-budget Hollywood history.
It is a film that is not subtle in its message of mortality and love. To some, the story may seem unfocused and sloppy, but to others, such as myself, it is one that resonates greatly. It is essentially a fairy tale and one that doesn’t fall prey to the sentimentality that often plagues these kind of films – but then again, Fincher has never been much of a sentimental guy. Somehow, despite this fairy tale aspect, the movie manages to stay grounded enough in reality that the romance between Benjamin and Daisy seems not only probable, but likely.
While Benjamin Button isn’t the most interesting character outside of his unusual circumstances, Brad Pitt does a great job getting into the skin of the character at whatever age he is. As a child in the body of an old man, he has the many mannerisms of an elderly person, but the naive innocence and curiosity of a child. As a middle-aged man in a younger man’s body, his baby face is apparent, but he’s wise enough to the world to know his selfish human desires in life and love can only lead to pain. Pitt captures all of the character’s complexity perfectly and an Oscar nod certainly isn’t out of the question here. The supporting cast are all just as strong – but Fincher always has had a knack for bringing out the best in actors and this is no different.
The technical aspects, as with all of Fincher’s films, are flawless. It is safe to say that Fincher is going to get his first Oscar nomination for Best Director. The effects and make-up teams deserve any and every award that can be thrown their way as well. In this aspect, it is a breathtaking achievement and the film is worth watching for this alone.
Benjamin Button isn’t quite a masterpiece, but it is damn fine filmmaking and one of the strongest films I’ve seen all year. Keep your eyes out for this sucker, because it’s going to win plenty awards here in a few months.
KURT:
I can imagine the difficulty of ‘capturing a complete life’ in a single film, the intricacies and nuance of even a mundane existence is a challenge to any filmmaker and to achieve this with some sort of resonance in an audience even moreso. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button seems more interested in being a technology and make-up demonstration than the ‘deep and meaningful fantasy’ that the scope and score would indicate. As a sentimental fountain of countrified platitudes it is more heavy-handed than Tim Burton’s Big Fish, and at times feels a lazy borrower of the quirky flashbacks and co-incidents of Magnolia and Forrest Gump (and while the melodrama and death ratio is often as high as P.T. Anderson’s film, I’m more specifically thinking of the ‘co-incidence’ flashbacks the insert themselves here as a short side story (and bombastic metaphor of a backwards clock) and a man often struck by lightening (all seven incidences never failed to elicit a genuine laugh though).
For a film that spends nearly three hours with its central character, you really don’t get to know much about him, it is content to skim along the surface of major incidents of his life and several love affairs (an episode in Russia with Tilda Swinton being by far the strongest) and friendships (a tug boat captain being by far the weakest). The love of his life, which I swear he doesn’t spend much time with until he is nearly 40, merely being whisked along by being the underwritten and selfishly bland Daisy (Cate Blanchett at her most mundane). The most compelling performance (other than that of the technicians – the film is beautiful) actually comes from the most genuine portrayed character in the film, Daisy’s daughter Caroline (welcome back Julia Ormond!) who actually never spends a single scene together with Benjamin Button. While she doesn’t have much to do beyond sharing voice-over narration duties when the film seems inclined to cut back to the framing story of Daisy on her deathbed, she nonetheless has the most expressive and nuanced face. Perhaps the films only source of subtlety (and this while Hurricane Katrina rages on in the background. Furthermore, the film spends a massive amount of time with the ‘old-newborn’ Benjamin, the seems to rush its conclusion, spending an embarrassingly poorly acted dozen minutes or so as child actors take over for Brad Pitt and the computers.
After the graceful and hefty Zodiac, this expensive looking epic is a major disappointment from David Fincher. Where the celebrity serial killer fact-finding mission mined the dark corners of the collective American psyche and offered a rich visual backdrop of three decades that had the good sense to never rubbed the viewers nose in its digital wizardry, Benjamin Button favours blunt fantasy and a cornball tourism of the 20th century without ever getting at the heart of anything. (In the growing library of Brad Pit films that exceed 2 and a half hours it is way more Meet Joe Black than The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). With its attempt at magical realism and wonder falling curiously flat, and that for a vast expanse of the film, Benjamin is a digital creation (albeit a pretty convincing one), I wonder if Benjamin Button would have been better served as a completely animated film. Would the expectations and of the medium (Animated Fantasy vs. Big Christmas Oscar Film) have changed anything? Maybe. Maybe Not.
ANDREW:
As we all know, expectations are nearly everything when it comes to a film you’re very much looking forward to or with a film you don’t think you’re going to like. With Benjamin Button, I’ve been really looking forward to this for about 6 months. While it was disappointing to some degree, it has kept me thinking over the past 36 hours or so.
Maybe the first thing people will notice and say about Benjamin Button is how gorgeous this film is. For this latest outing, Fincher has gone with Claudio Miranda for his cinematographer. Miranda has worked with Fincher before, but never in the head honcho capacity of aesthetics. Every shot is as meticulous as it is beautiful. So much so that for me it was actually a distraction. Everything was just too damn perfect. Then again, this is a sort of fairy tale and maybe fairy tales are supposed to look like moving paintings. Either way, there’s no denying that a lot of work went into making each frame a spectacle to behold.
As for the plotline, I find the short story to be more fulfilling and leaves a lot more to the imagination. In Fincher’s version, we almost get too much exposition. The stories within Button’s life are nice, but a lot of them are inconsequential to anything. They are simply bits of a man’s life. The war scene for example. It isn’t any more profound or interesting in Benjamin Button’s case than it would be with any other movie character. The fact that he is aging backwards has no relevance to this bit of story telling. And there are several sequences like this – they just don’t matter.
There are lots of nit picks I could find (*cough* hummingbird, *cough*). Still, for a movie that is almost three hours in length, it really seemed to rush by quickly. As I left the theater pondering what I had just seen, I knew that I wanted to love the film but couldn’t. I wanted to hate it, but couldn’t. Somehow I felt different. I was inspired. Inspired to do what, I don’t know. Travel? Be less materialistic? Be happy with what I have? I don’t know. But driving home I felt good and realized that although the movie doesn’t overtly say much, subconsciously it has loads to say and the characters express those ideas well and charismatically. Blanchett remains on my “best of” list of actresses… probably right at the top.
JOHN:
It would be pretty easy to associate The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with Forest Gump. Both movies follow an outcast through several moments of their life and both revolve around a love story. In many ways though Button is a much more personal story that never feels the need to tie its main characters into history. The closest this ever comes to happening is the fact that at one point Benjamin Button is drawn into World War 2. Fincher’s film wants to draw you into the characters and their relationship and unfortunately it never fully succeeds. I do not believe that it would have been more of a success if it had a more epic story as was hinted from the trailers but what The Curious Case of Benjamin Button needed was some character growth.
The really is not a lot to say about the characters of either Benjamin or Daisy. Benjamin grows from being a somewhat innocent boy in an old man’s body who falls in love instantly with Daisy. In the end he is an old man in a young boy’s body who still loves Daisy. Along the way he learns to enjoy life and watches some of his friends and family die. This is where the main conceit of the movie does not work. This same thing would have happened to anyone no matter how they age. On her deathbed, Daisy is passing along the story of Benjamin to her daughter by having her daughter read his diary out loud to her. It is only during her reading that Daisy’s daughter learns just how good of dancer her mother was. It is in this scene that I realized how little I liked the character of Daisy. I felt no attachment to her character and never once felt that the relationship between Benjamin and Daisy was that powerful or meaningful.
All of this is not to say that I did not take some enjoyment from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The relationships between Benjamin and Captain Mike and between Benjamin and Elizabeth Abbot were both somewhat intriguing. The characters within the old age home were also interesting. The special effects used to age Brad Pitt were very well done but in the end I walked away from Fincher’s film wanting more. Button and Daisy should have both changed mentally as well as physically and in the end this is where the movie failed.
MIKE:
The key to my appreciation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was in recognizing what its intentions were without burdening it with my own expectations of what they should have been. Benjamin Button is first and foremost a fairy tale; even when the subject matter touches upon the maudlin realities of aging, dying, and regret, it softens the edges with its magical flourishes and gold-lit delivery. The film nears three hours long but never lags, brimming with set-piece after set-piece of wondrous things to look at. The albeit unceasing voice-over still bears the markings of a fairy tale in its delivery, and with the exception of the present-day hospital scenes, the film is rightfully disconnected from the demands of realism. But every time Hurricane Katrina was evoked, every time a semblance of realism in the hospital reared its head, the illusion was temporarily broken. Big Fish, Princess Bride, The Neverending Story, the device of book-end reality is well-established in fantasy films, so I am willing to overlook it and give the film the benefit of the doubt as to its where its heart ultimately lies.
My first impressions of Benjamin Button was that for a fairy tale it was unusually restrained. Save for the main conceit of the film, a person aging in reverse (which is obsessively rendered through Fincher’s CGI lens), the world is one of nostalgic beauty more so than fantastical creatures and situations. Everything is exaggerated but not so much as to leave the realm of our world completely, and this suggestive reality and lack of irony may be why in this case so many critics deride Fincher as a coldly stoic filmmaker unable to capture real emotional complexities. It seems an easy criticism to make, and while I admit that the emotional effect of Benjamin Button never quite hit home for me, as a pantomime made up of ciphers controlled and actualized by Fincher, I was able to enjoy it on its own terms. I would have liked Benjamin to be a character of contradictions and minute character nuances, but this emphasis would have ran contrary to the world and story being depicted. I think Fincher was looking at him as a subject of time lapse photography, something that needed to stay relatively fixed, a one-note character which undeveloped allowed the elapsing of time to show acutely his transitions. Benjamin Button is an idea more than a person, and the film is a poetic musing on aging more than it is a romantic story about Benjamin and Daisy. Fincher is omniscient in the film, moving his characters around to convey this overarching theme. It may bother some for its on-the-nose delivery, but for me it worked fairly well. The short story was a sliver of an idea, and the film is an extension of that sliver, filling the frame with a myriad of events contained within a lifetime, although the particulars of the life remain less important than the cyclical nature of it.
Yet we endure nearly three hours watching the myriad of events in Benjamin’s life, and so there is a valid criticism that although symbolic, if they do not work at least partially on their own merit as story elements, then the whole is flawed. Time and again the voice-over was required to tell you that such and such was a pivotal point in the character’s life, and it was needed because nothing in the story would lead you to that conclusion independently. I am usually fine with voice-over but it was used to ridiculous lengths in this film and interfered with key plot points that should have been observed. While I love Cate Blanchett, her Daisy character was like a black hole in the film, the ice princess herself, Tilda Swinton, felt more of a human being than Daisy. This detracted from my enjoyment of their romance significantly. The hummingbird (Button’s equivalent to Gump’s feather) was also distracting and unnecessary. Parts of the film just creak like an old house, while others, such as the Elisabeth romance, have both story and vision aligning into something worthy of the subject.
In short, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a decent film which was unable to coalesce into something entirely worthy of its grandiose themes. It will be no where near my top ten of the year, but it is neither a bad film nor a blight on Fincher’s career.
Consensus:
(3.3/5) Looks like once again we’re all pretty much in agreement. While there is some slight varying degree in likability, for the most part The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was sort of disappointing all around; especially considering the love for Fincher around here. It turns out that Benjamin Button doesn’t really adhere to any relevance, hence little emotion or excitement is evoked. While it looks nice, it seems that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button isn’t all that curious. Still, it does have its moments and for some reason the film is likable, but certainly not a top ten contender.
I kind of like how all of you had all these massive expectations and were let down, and I had extremely low expectations and ended up loving it.
I’ll only poke at one thing
“all seven incidences never failed to elicit a genuine laugh though”
As much as I love comedy, I’m more of an ‘inwards laugher’ and a smiler, and rarely a laugh out loud person at movies. I laughed my ass off at the lightning guy, and every time you saw him again I was already laughing before you even got to the clip in preparation, gasping for what was coming. It’s all in the presentation. I learned that people getting hurt in sped up newsreel footage out of nowhere is awesome.
And the movie fucks with you. They show you 6 times, not 7.
I bet the seventh time is after the credits.
My expectations were not that big, once I saw the trailer I had an idea of what kind of film this was going to be and it pretty much lived up to it. As a straight fairy tale, doing the best it possibly could do, it would still not make more than a 4/5 for me. Pantomime is just not something that rates high on my experiences, although at its best it is very enjoyable.
Funny that I stayed until the music credits came. Several folks were staying to see if something was at the end of the credits though. I guess I can’t count, but I bet rot is right that the last lightning strike was at the end of the credits.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either. I couldn’t wait though. I had to piss. The “I have to pee” line got a lot of laughs in the movie, and I think it was because everyone felt the same way.
On a side note, fucking Alberta(ns). At the theater I saw it in, something weird happened there. When people get up to go to the bathroom or just leave the theater for whatever reason there, nobody pulls their legs back or does the half stand up. they keep their feet firmly in place, as if to send a message/discourage people from moving lest you impede their viewing experience. I said to my sister “This is weird. Please tell me this is just this place and these people”. She said “It’s not just here. It’s on the buses, on the escalators, everywhere. They will not move for you. Its Fuck You Im Sitting, Fuck You Im Standing”
and in addition to that, its also Fuck You, We Hate Taxes So Much We Dont Sand Or Salt The Roads. I saw around 5 car accidents a day, not results of them, ones actually happening. and around a dozen or so people who were in ditches or assessing damage.
Fucking Alberta.
The last time I was there there (Calgary) in 2000, I found that several Albertans had a serious chip on their shoulder about Toronto as well.
Kurt…
Most Westerns have a serious chip on their shoulders about Toronto. Live in the west for a decade and you will grow to understand why.
Well, that is what unites the country, go out east and you hear plenty-o-guff on the big T.O. In Montreal it is the hockey rivalry. So I guess Toronto unites the country in one small way…
I thought the lightning parts were fantastic.
Not on topic, but a little snippet from a recent interview with Fincher that I liked:
Do the “Forrest Gump” comparisons bother you?
Fincher: “Forrest Gump”? What’s that? Instead of the ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances, I thought of [Benjamin] as an extraordinary man in very ordinary circumstances.
“Live in the west for a decade and you will grow to understand why.”
I grew up in the east and my relatives still live in the east.
I left the east and saw this Toronto they all had such negatives things to say about. There’s things I could bash about Toronto, and it may even be fair to say nobody hates Toronto better than Torontonians.
But at the same time I consider my friends down east full of shit, who have never seen a black person who wasn’t there on vacation, never heard a gay accent, nothing, who have this idea of a Sodom and Gomorrah punctuated by a phallus. A friend here went there and was welcomed as finally coming to “The Real Canada”
There’s nothing I hate more than rural people who get this Joe the Plumber attitude that they are the ‘heart’ of the nation and better than people in cities. This ‘real Canada’, ‘real America’ attitude is a bunch of shit, terms like the ‘heartland’ can go fuck off and die. If they want to sit in such judgment, then I’ve given up placating their sensitive ego and will judge them too: They live in a hive of cow shit and greed, who have so many jobs available that they treat it as a given, that their job is a right.
I’ve never received worse service in my life than I did in Alberta, I’d say that for sure. Whether its the randy river where you get ignored and the employees yell and call each other ‘faggot’ from across the store instead of helping you, to the waiters who hit your table once, to the department stores stacked with employees who are apparently still negotiating whether or not they need to actually stock the shelves, the place is an embarrassment, whose worth is only alleviated by the fact that as a tourist you can take advantage of a low sales tax.
And there was this hilarious Edmonton Journal article, it was the banner headline, and it was an op ed about the west being the best and that the east is out of the drivers seat, that their fuel sands planning will never ever run dry and alternative fuel plans could never ever toss a wrench in this thing they’re taking for granted.
fucking alberta.
There’s a movie coming out soon too starring Renee Zellweger about a city girl who goes to Minnesota, and the people there teach her lessons about life and love and she’s an ignorant fool who doesnt understand how anything works..
I grew up in a farm community, and gradually have lived and worked in bigger towns and cities. I can recognize the duality of urban self-hatred/superiority as being worthy of mockery, but the ignorant self-righteousness i re-enter with my those who still live in the rural areas and who have never left them has overall been far more insufferable.
There are those who experience everything and indulge in everything and lose sight of the simple pleasures and values of a sentimental, slowed-down world, but personally its easier to deal with than those who take such pride in their bubble of disinformation and inexperience.
That Minnesota movie looks absolutely dreadful. How many minutes of comedy can you get watching Rene Zellweger do slapstick pratfalls. Yie, I won’t be going near that film.
Ditto on your thoughts goon(j). I find it hilarious when some of my friends mock the ‘arty films’ that I enjoy watching, yet take serious umbrage to me smacking down Adam Sandler comedies and swill like The Bucket List. Yes I occasionally watch crap and not all arthouse and smaller or technically formal films are good, but these other folks never even attempt these non-multiplex or non-purely-entertainment films before to deriding them and those who watch them. I’m as guilty as the next person for bashing stuff based on marketing and trailers, but to write off anything outside the explosions or fart-jokes or inspirational sports flicks tends gets my back up.
This brings me back to the topic at hand. I’ll take the citiots who actually venture to the country over the hicks who never leave the country almost all of the time. Overly preachy country folks in film are to me, often as offensive as the ‘magical black man’. I think that is why I dislike Pixar’s CARS so much, because it indulges in that particular trope.
(All that that being said, Fargo is awesome and Forrest Gump still sucks.)
Having watched USED CARS today (Thanks Andrew!) I like the sassier F-bomb dropping Zemikis/Gale team over the treacly American Heartland sentimentality Zemekis/Gale. (That being said, 1941 still sucks)
Cars is an animated version of Doc Hollywood.
I mock Cars, but I really don’t hate it. it’s just so much the lesser of every other Pixar film.
You know, I think a movie like Junebug gets it right for me. It’s kind of sentimental and sweet about the country, but doesn’t mind taking jabs either.
As for friends with shitty taste who won’t try anything different, I had an old roommate country hick who wanted to watch one of my DVDs, and based on his lowbrow sense of humor I recommended he watch Clerks. He’d never even heard of it, which I guess is fine, but he refused to watch it because it was in black and white.
It didnt matter that I comforted him with the promise of sex humor and Star Wars jokes. It was in black and white.
I used to work at a video store, and there were fellow employees that wouldn’t watch anything that had subtitles.
That’s right.
Isn’t that pretty normal for North Americans though, that they don’t watch stuff with subtitles? I thought that was the reason whenever some good populistic movie comes out of somewhere else, they have to remake it.
Leave it to Henrik to label anything Americans do as “typical.” I don’t think that’s an accurate statement at all. Having said that and working in a movie store, yes, there are a lot of people I overhear say, “Oh that has subtitles, I don’t want that.” But there are an equal (if not more) number of people who are willing to give anything a go if it is good – or I tell them it is good.
As for the country mouse/city mouse discussion. The difference is simple (and I know because I grew up in both the city and the true country and a rural small town sort of all at the same time).
City folk who come to the country and are green as hell are simply laughed at a little bit behind their back for not knowing how to run a piece of machinary or having no idea how to properly behave around a horse.
Country folk (who don’t have access to as quality or an abundance of education) who come to the city are mocked and ridiculed for intolerance, ignorance or for their traditional beliefs.
So yeah, country folk take everything in stride and sort of laugh things off, while city folk are cruel and judgemental.
Unfortunately, I think Henrik is right though on the subtitle thing. It is not necessarily an American thing but just a people thing. My guess is that any country which is predominantly uni lingual would have this problem. I can’t for one second imagine many of my relatives sitting down and watching a subtitled movie.
“So yeah, country folk take everything in stride and sort of laugh things off, while city folk are cruel and judgemental.”
Country folk don’t make judgments about peoples beliefs, huh? I suppose thats why every fucking election cycle politicians have to suck up so hard to the country folk to prove they are one of them, bash San Francisco, and call the country folk the heart of America? Every election cycle the way to win is to disown the cities more.
I mean your very statement that the country folk are the ones who laugh things off, and its those damn citiots who are the cruel ones, furthur buys into all of that. All of the nicest people I know, the people who I can be the most open with, who won’t judge anything I believe, who can laugh at anything, are all my city friends. All of the most judgmental people, who I have to watch my mouth around the most, who I have to pander to and placate to get through a conversation with, are out in the country.
With that said:
The reality is probably that you are simply more comfortable one place or the other, and the way you see other people there is completely relative to how you connect with each other.
So for me though, when it comes back to “cruel and judgmental”, theres more justification for holding a person in contempt for ignorance, intolerance and finding virtue in never leaving the town, than there is for not knowing how to milk a cow or ride a tractor. People don’t like being looked down on, but someone who isn’t willing to give X a chance because of their preset beliefs is a lot more frustrating and more difficult to deal with than someone who is open to anything. You know how frustrating it is to be around people, and you’re like “Wanna go do ________ or see __________” “Cant. Jesus.”
Yes. that basically has happened, and furthermore, it’s country folk who not only felt the need to be shocked and appalled at my suggestions of things to do, but felt the need to run and tell my parents about how I live my life.
Are you the kind of person who watches the end of American Teen and sees Hannah Bailey and says to yourself, “RUN AWAY HANNAH AND NEVER COME BACK!” or do you say “Shut up”
“My guess is that any country which is predominantly uni lingual would have this problem.”
Any person who speaks English can make it through their life never having to see a subtitled movie. There is so much English content, and so much/at least enough of it is good, that a lot of people can justify their ignorance to themselves.
A lot of people just won’t read books, so its not surprising they wont deal with a subtitled movie.
If anyone remembers in high school when people had to read in front of the class, how some people seemed illiterate or extremely slow and awkward when they read – sometimes I think they never got better and that when they’re seeing a subtitled movie, they really can’t read and watch at the same time, they have to put a lot of effort into just following along.
“who don’t have access to as quality or an abundance of education”
The education I had in the country was no worse than what I got in a medium sized city.
And as if inner cities, like Washington DC, have quality/abundance of education. There’s bad educational systems anywhere. If I have a slight moment to seem anti-american, if Canadians look down on the US over anything, it might be the low priority it seems there seems to be in investing in the youth, the ridiculously overblown high schools that get way too big, even in small towns(as if to compensate for those who will never get the college experience?), and the ridiculous cost of any decent college/university. American rural areas seem to be a lot more anti-intellectual than the rural areas up here. Maybe there is a lack of access to education as you claim, but at the same time they seem to have a chip on their shoulder about it to the point they have to treat as something to be proud about, that an education would turn them into one of them big city heathen assholes.
I have to admit blanket/generalization statements like the one I made isn’t really very fair. I can only go by my experiences. I do not live in the Bible belt nor have I ever had much experience with people there (or in the south for that matter). When I say “in the country,” I really only meant my personal bubble of knowledge (Northern and Southern MN and Minneapolis).
And when I said the people from the city are cruel and judgmental, “judgmental” shouldn’t have been the word I used. I should’ve said scoffing. People from the city look at people in the country as idiots and their voices shouldn’t be counted or taken very seriously because they’re from the country and don’t really know how the “real world” works.
While people in the country maybe do have some “primitive” beliefs, usually their only major concerns are things like whether or not the tractor is going to start in the morning or if the weather is finally going to cooperate this year.
And maybe the reason for this is as you said, it’s more frustrating and easier to snap to anger when trying to understand someone for their “ignorance, intolerance and finding virtue in never leaving the town, than there is for not knowing how to milk a cow or ride a tractor.”
“Any person who speaks English can make it through their life never having to see a subtitled movie. There is so much English content, and so much/at least enough of it is good, that a lot of people can justify their ignorance to themselves.
A lot of people just won’t read books, so its not surprising they wont deal with a subtitled movie.
If anyone remembers in high school when people had to read in front of the class, how some people seemed illiterate or extremely slow and awkward when they read – sometimes I think they never got better and that when they’re seeing a subtitled movie, they really can’t read and watch at the same time, they have to put a lot of effort into just following along.”
I’ll definitely give you that but in the case of subtitled movies I have a feeling many more movies are released with subtitles in multi-lingual countries than are here in North America.
I also think there’s an unfair stigma attached to subtitled movies. If you have to read it’s probably some artsy farsty movie that is boring as hell. Ya know, like Oldboy or Night/Day Watch or Pan’s Labyrinth.
Plus a lot of people are simply just lazy.
“People from the city look at people in the country as idiots and their voices shouldn’t be counted or taken very seriously because they’re from the country and don’t really know how the “real world” works.”
Around half of the people in Toronto are immigrants who weren’t born there, and there is always the great flocking of people from rural areas who move to Toronto when they are in their 20s, have fun and collectively make fun of what they left behind because they didn’t fit in at home – same way i guess you’d scoff at the jocks or cheerleaders in your high school maybe… and maybe eventually they push their way out more into the suburbs and settle down. I know very few people who were born and raised within a big city, and I’d say they scoff less than the people who scoff out of personal experience of growing up there.
The people I know who grew up within the city are the ones you could more comedically be out of touch with the country way of life, but more actively try to get out into the cottages area or travel abroad. They have their own ignorance but I think they are raised in a more culturally diverse environment that sort of trains them to want to explore.
“their voices shouldn’t be counted or taken very seriously because they’re from the country and don’t really know how the “real world” works.”
I don’t think most people in cities want to cut them off, but again have this experience of trying to express themselves or bring their own beliefs into the environment, and getting rebuffed because it doesn’t fit tradition/the way they were raised. I’m sure you know there are a lot of people who see ‘tolerance’ as being politically correct, and that respect to other religions or cultures is being thrust upon them, that they feel THEY are somehow the ones being repressed. The paranoia out in the country is a reality. I think its because yes, a lot of them actually DON’T know how the real world works, haven’t come across certain cultures to realize there’s nothing to be afraid about, that Obama isn’t a muslim and that a gay teacher isn’t going to rape their children.
I realize a lot of them have greater concerns as you mentioned, who don’t have spare hours in their week to argue over the internet about stuff like this, but there are some things that are so simple to learn and understand, that when i come across them, are hard to swallow with an “i’m busy” as the excuse. I’ve worked a number of jobs where you are left to a lot of time with your thoughts, even a dumb person should be able to drum up some basic concepts, and giving them the excuse of “well they’re farmers” just may be condescending as well.
There is a micro-Bible Belt out east through New Brunswick that crosses through rural Maine, I’m sure most states or provinces have one as well. As for the south, I have some bad personal experiences through my travels in say, Macon Georgia.
I mean, if you were in that Arby’s with me in that sea of mullets and sweat pants, I have a hard time thinking you wouldn’t have made fun of it later either, if at least to relieve the tension. Then there was the ‘Canuk go home’ keyed in the car. Nice.
Working in a store with employees who refused to watch City of God was infuriating. It took the youngest employee with the basest, shittiest Scary Movie-ish taste to take me up on the offer and love it for them to listen. Yikes.
Many countries still Dub films. I believe Germany and France are big ‘dubbers’.
One more thing, a lot of the stuff written here isn’t necessarily a city vs. country thing, but a culturally diverse vs. single culture kind of thing. I started this thing off with making fun of Edmonton, the actual capital of Alberta, an actual city with its own alternative weeklies. Even within that city, you’re dealing with a predominantly white mall culture who refer to other cultures as “the ethnics”. Ironically the most culturally diverse place I saw in the city was the farmers market downtown, with country crafts, wood carvings, pastries, home cooking, etc from every color face you can think of.
South of the city I could find some Sikh’s and Indians at a WalMart, but seriously, its so white that the white people have to section themselves off to find people to mock, and apparently what I’ve learned is that the Ukrainian whites aren’t particularly well liked and at one point decades ago they tried to legislate them out of the province. Probably a gross simplification with errors about that, but that’s the kind of thing I’m used to seeing in areas I’ve lived where everyone is white. They find different ways to section off, the Baptists hate the Anglicans, the Anglicans hate the Lutherans, everyone outside your church is going to hell. One of my cousins is hiding his Catholic wife from my Wesleyan grandmother, who would have a heart attack and die if she knew.
“I believe Germany and France are big ‘dubbers’.”
You know, that actually pisses me off, you always hear about Americans who have to remake foreign movies and won’t watch subtitles, but its time these people took some shit for their terrible dubbing.
Here in Canada you can turn to the French channels and the Simpsons will be on, and they’ve ruined the voices by dubbing to the point I don’t understand how they could possibly be funny. Those voices are so much of the character. You never see any English show or movie they decide to run with French subtitles.
Fuckers.
Boy, I’m an American and you guys are so right. I HATE reading. I can’t imagine reading a two hour movie, let alone a whole book with a story arch and characters and stuff.
I’m going to get back to my coloring books and Lite Brite now.
Andy, as per usual, we are talking the ‘center of the bell’ of the population distribution in a country (not just the US, but Canada also, and this likely applies to many other countries as well). We’d like to see the average person have more interest. Of course there are hundreds of thousands Americans (and folks from any country) who are sharp and interested in book/film/theatre/music culture. It just seems a shame that there are so many movie screens and they are all showing the same stuff where there is a plethora of great smaller movies screaming for an audience.
In terms of disrespect, remake is worst, but dubbing isn’t far behind.
I was disheartened to check out Row Three’s collbaroative review of Benjamin Button and find it to have dissapointed most, if not all, of you. I personally LOVED this thing.
The thing that immediately struck me from the moment we delve into Benjamin’s story (that is, when we transcend from Daisy’s daughter talking to Benjamin narrating – simple but effective device used throughout) is how well directed it is. Fincher is indeed one of the best filmmakers working today, he’s proven that time and time again (oh yes – you bet your ass Alien 3 was awesome), and he almost outdoes himself on ambition here (and that’s saying something considering the mammoth amount of information he had to work with, and succesfully moulded into a film, on Zodiac). I agree with you, Kurt, when you say it’s certainly a task and a half to encapsulate a person’s life in one movies but I can ‘t see how you think it skimmed over major events.
I think because there’s so much in there it just seems like skimming but Fincher sets aside adequate time to pretty much everything…any more on, let’s say for example, the segment with Benjamin’s encounters with Swinton’s character (Swinton is, btw, as brilliant as ever here) – any more time donated to that segment and it would have dragged. But I think Fincher got the time devotion pretty much perfect, which is largely why the film breezes along despite it’s heft 166 minute runtime.
It goes without saying that the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, probably up there with Slumdog and WALL E for the best looking film of the last year or so, and the music is subtle and has that right feel of “fairy-tale magic”. The performances across the board are brilliant, with Pitt managing to shake-off the celebrity status and not only play the role but become the character (something that, for example, Tom Cruise seems to be hit and miss with i.e. hit with Collateral, miss with the recent Valyrie). Taraji P. Henson in particular as Benjamin’s sort of adoptive mother, if you want to call her that, I thought was one of the best aside from Pitt. Heck, even the actor who plays the tugboat captain (who’s name I embaressingly can’t seem to recall) is great, providing that much needed bursts of comedic relief.
But above all what really got me on a gut level about Benjamin Button was the sense that it really means something, that it has a purpose and point. It has messages and feels true-to-life. The premise is a bit gimmicky on first hearing it but it merely serves as a filter for us to look at an angle on life that, I think I can say with sureness, we haven’t seen done on the big-screen before. I was utterly captivated throughout.
So, yes, I am a huge fan of this movie. I found it emotional, engaging, wondrous to look at (both with the “How the fuck did they pull that off?!” visual effects and the elegant cinematography), brillinatly acted, finely written and expertly directed. Easily up there with the best of Fincher’s work, and in my books no questions asked a 5 star movie.