MALLINation

As the run-up to Academy Awards night enters its final week, I’ve noticed a particular amount of backlash for Slumdog Millionaire and especially The Curious Case of Benjamni Button.

The Slumdog grumbling centers mostly on the usual handwringing over cultural appropriation – is it OK for a Western director to shoot and set his film in a different mileu, is this expoloitative, shouldn’t actual homegrown Indian films be getting this level of interest and acclaim? All I care about is whether it was any good, and it was. The rest is navel gazing.

Ben Jam But, as it’s known on the space-challenged marquee of my local theater, is another ball of wax entirely. In some ways it’s a David Lean-esque Hollywood epic of the old school by one of the least likely directors to attempt this sort of thing – Fight Club and Zodiac director David Fincher.

The length and scope and sweep of the film all bring to mind earlier epics which in and of itself leads to some resistance among the film cognoscenti who prefer something more raw and gritty.

Paradoxically the other side of this debate, those who are hoping for a big yarn to transport them cinematically are also a bit dubious about the film. Partly that’s because the old fashioned bigness is underscored by new fangled terrabytes – computer enhancement is used not just to sweeten scenes but as whole backdrops and even to age (and un-age) the characters.

The first film to apply computer wizardry on a broad scale to this type of story was Forrest Gump, another big Oscar contender written by the same guy who did Button, Eric Roth.

Despite their similarities Button is a superior film in every way to the glutinous Gump, which in Bob Zemeckis’ hands sends it’s simpleminded hero through a Zelig-lite tour of history in which big stuff happens but rarely by his doing.

Like Gump Brad Pitt has the dauntig task of playing an essential passive character but his place in history is not to be lurking around world leaders and events for the sake of a gag shot. Instead the story is given thematic weight by the choices of New Orleans as the base of action, an extended sojourn in the USSR, and even a poignant shot of a rocket blasting off from Cape Canaveral.

These all play into the idea of youth and of decay, side by side in the same orgainism ebbing and flowing inexorably. The reversal of the aging process for Pitt’s title character serves to heighten the circular nature of life and death in a way that ably skirts cliche.

Whereas Gump also wallowed in sentimentality (as well as a deep vein of conservatism) Button keeps us at arm’s length for much of the film. Luckily the visuals are endlessly interesting with Claudio Miranda’s lush cinematography married to Fincher’s unerring sense of framing.

Still more than 2 hours go by with the thought that what we are seeing is interesting but not really affecting. That is, until the last 45 minutes or so which pack a wallop.

Part of the backlash may in fact be attributed to the fact that those who sat through the intellectual chilliness of the first part of the film were rewarded by a greatly moving, superb performance by Cate Blanchett which in typically Oscar fashion was overlooked.

Where Gump’s heroine was a freethinking libertine who was punished for her curiosity with a drug addiction and incurable disease, Blanchett plays a similar free spirit who as in the earlier film sometimes takes our hero for granted.

As the Button goes on though it’s Pitt who fades away and Blanchett who holds the screen. It’s one of the great performances of the past year.

Where Button comes perilously close to overdoing it is in the Katrina set framing device, but this too ends up having thematic resonance as well as landing without the expected thud. As Blanchett experiences the titular character’s diaries we are also exposed to another subtle theme – the unknown.

Just as we don’t know why Pitt ages backwards (though there is a mystical explanation offered) , and we don’t know what death brings, we also don’t know big chunks of our character’s lives. Most films gloss over the impossibility of knowing everything through editing and narrative trickery but Button’s diary has several pages torn out. Similarly Blanchett has times when she has gone off to live a life that we don’t see, and she refuses to discuss.

Could it be this reticence which has made some people resistant?

I don’t think Button is the equal of Fincher’s overlooked masterpiece Zodiac, which was unceremoniously dumped into theaters at the beginning of last year. It is a fascinating film though and worth seeing.