A second lump of Gump

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson and Tilda Swinton.
Directed by David Fincher.
Rated PG-13 for brief war violence, sexual content, language and smoking.
2 hrs. 47 min.

How crazy . . . or bold . . . or foolhardy . . . do you have to be to make a big, expensive movie out of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s least adaptable short story? Director David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac) has boldly gone where others have feared to tread with the nearly three-hour The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Fitzgerald was a great prose stylist, which may be why he hasn’t been particularly well served by screen adaptations. The Great Gatsby has been filmed no fewer than four times, never entirely satisfactorily: No matter how memorable the story, the dialogue and the characters, there’s no compensating for the absence of his actual words ... sentences ... paragraphs.

In that regard, his 1922 tale is a relatively good choice for a film; because it’s one of his worst. Taking off from an uncharacteristically surreal idea, Fitzgerald chronicles the life of a man who, at birth, is, in all respects other than time on earth, a 70-year-old. Physically and mentally he grows younger and younger with time, meeting his father in age, and then his son and finally his grandson. Eventually he regresses (progresses?) to infancy.

It doesn’t take much thought to see what insane problems this gimmicky hook presents on screen. It’s easier to picture it as an animated short. In prose, Fitzgerald could pull off scenes that don’t translate to anything in the real world. In the hospital nursery, Benjamin’s father is presented with an adult-sized, bearded, wizened son, who can speak perfect English, yet has no personal memories or experiences. We barely hear about Mrs. Button — the extraordinary woman who has apparently carried this giant to term without anyone noticing and has survived his delivery.

In the film, baby Benjamin has the appearance and the worn-out organs of a very old man — or the Eraserhead baby — but is still like an infant in size and language skills. In essence, he grows and learns like the rest of us; he just looks wrong. The father (Jason Flemyng), a New Orleans businessman, is so appalled and embarrassed by this “monster” that he abandons it on the steps of an old-folks home, to be raised by one of the employees,

Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a black woman who is already used to dealing with incontinent white people, albeit in a different age bracket.

As a white-haired pre-adolescent, he falls madly in love with a little girl named Daisy (Elle Fanning, later to morph into Madisen Beaty and finally Cate Blanchett). Her parents are none too happy about this attentiveness from someone who appears to be a 70-year-old midget (whom Daisy intuitively recognizes as a child.)

Benjamin eventually goes to sea, learns about passion from an ambassador’s wife (Tilda Swinton) in Murmansk, survives World War II, and returns home to court Daisy, now a modern dancer with an insufferable personality.

Screenwriter Roth is best known for Forrest Gump, and it’s tempting to think of the new film as a second lump of Gump. It has the same leisurely pace, the same narrative structure, the same use of voiceover and the same broad canvas, bumping around from New Orleans to Russia to Paris to New York. I was half expecting Benjamin to tell us that “life’s like a box of pralines.”

More troubling, however, is that, like Forrest, Benjamin is remarkably passive for a protagonist: For most of the film, he is someone to whom things happen. He has much of Gump’s beatific blankness. That may make sense, given the bizarre position he finds himself in, but it still leaves the audience no one to identify with.

Pitt is the film’s calm center, and he brings more nuance than one might think possible to a character living an unimaginable life. Blanchett is perfect as always, despite the thanklessness of the role.

Rex Reed has called Benjamin Button “one of the greatest films ever made,” a sweeping judgment that he’s qualified to make by vice of having starred in one of the worst films ever made (Myra Breckenridge). I can’t come close to embracing his hyperbole, but, for all the negatives, I still think the film is worthwhile. Fincher is always interesting, and he gets points simply for attempting such a ferkakte story. Despite its length and expansive pace, it’s never dull. And, despite the dubiousness of its stabs at being “meaningful,” it still leaves you with more than most mega-productions.               

andyk@lacitybeat.com