The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button vs The Bridges Of Madison County

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button hinges on such a tired movie cliche that if you told me beforehand it was featured, I'd likely not have seen the movie. And largely, it would have been my loss. But still: the old woman on her deathbed, who is actually a young actress in old age makeup, remembers that enigmatic man who drifted in and out of her life, changing her very being forever (by, you know, having scissors for hands or stowing away on the Titanic or whatever). Why she told no one until she needed help eating and sleeping is beyond me. Luckily, there are journals nearby for when the morphine drip kicks in.

The old lady in question in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is Daisy, played from roughly twenty years old to death of old age by Cate Blanchett. Daisy's kept a huge secret from her daughter (Julia Ormond, good in an unnecessary role): the great love of her life was Benjamin Button, who was born wrinkly and feeble and grew younger as he grew up. We're led to believe in the movie's initial moments that it's the story of Daisy, but we soon learn that Benjamin is the focus. Well of course he is, he's got that freakish aging pattern, and half way through it he turns into Brad Pitt in one of those performances that reminds us why we have movie stars in the first place.

Benjamin Button, see, wasn't just old and then young. He was a spirited, interesting fellow, and lived a life like no other. As he grew and traveled, he met a host of characters, each designed to Teach Him Big Lessons. There's the Pygmy who shows that it's important to take risks (and that hot chicks sometimes go for little guys), the drunk tugboat captain who's loyal until his last breath, and of course, his wise Southern mama, who tells him "You never know what's coming". Uh. you've seen this movie before, right? Sounds maybe a little Forrest Gumpish?

Yeah, it is. Forrest Gump and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button have the same screenwriter, and as you can tell, hit a lot of the same beats. Luckily, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button distinguishes itself early on as a darker movie, one based far less on coincidence, and with characters that are far more challenging. Benjamin doesn't just luck his way through life. He's got a pretty big obstacle to overcome, and lives as good as he can despite that. For example, during a layover while working on the boat, he meets the wife of a politician, played by Tilda Swinton. She's sad and mysterious, and bonds with Benjamin thinking they're the same age. They talk over latenight tea, and eventually start an affair. We know Benjamin is barely out of his teens, but she doesn't. Watching Benjamin experience his first love is fascinating, funny, and tragic, knowing that the only way Benjamin can have experiences like this is to be with strangers, and to never reveal much about himself. It doesn't hurt that Tilda Swinton is a true original, and that her performance is one of the high points of the film.

The central relationship is between Benjamin and Daisy. When they meet, he's elderly and she's young, but they become fast friends (much to the dismay of her grandmother, and likely, some people in the audience). They meet again when Daisy is grown, but she's a shallow, impetuous, free-spirited dancer, and is so consumed with herself and her life in New York, that Benjamin can barely get a word in. It's fairly bold to portray the female lead in a way that could be read as negative, especially since everyone knows from her first scene that she's destined to be Benjamin's love. If we don't like her, we're not likely to understand if he likes her. He likes her a lot, and in the exact middle of their lives, Benjamin and Daisy meet again with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett at the full powers of their movie stardom, lit like a million bucks, swimming and dancing and loving life. Brilliant. If you're going to pile actors under make-up and special effects, with the promise that midway through the movie they'll both be revealed in their true form, then you better bring Movie. Stars. I think Pitt and Blanchett qualify. Pitt will get more attention, because he's the title character and gets to be all special-effecty, but Blanchett plays every age he plays, and does so marvelously (if she does her own dancing, she does that well too).

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button probably sounds like a touchy-feely choice for David Fincher. He must have felt the same way, because there's an underlying sadness to every moment of the film, and dark humor throughout. Visually, it's a wonder, especially the work done on Benjamin himself. Brad Pitt appears to have performed every scene, even though his body ages and grows from miserly and tiny to regular Brad Pitt, to Brad Pitt twenty years ago (after that, it's handled by kid actors).

The Bridges of Madison County is another movie, like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, that is framed, needlessly, by the daughter of the main character reading old journals. These journals also reveal an affair with a stranger from the past, and were also hidden until the last moment. The Bridges of Madison County has a tough-guy director (Clint Eastwood), who, by the film's topic, appears to have gone soft. And it's got a female lead at the top of her game. It's kind of the same movie, condensed from a lifetime to a weekend. Hey, sometimes you wanna get in and get out.

Meryl Streep plays an Italian immigrant, married to a farmer in Iowa. Her husband and kids are gone for the weekend to a pig contest or something, so she's left there to take care of things and make iced-tea and so on. Clint Eastwood rolls into town. He's a photographer working for Life magazine, and he wants a guide to finding the covered bridges in the area. You can probably guess the rest, and if you've skipped this one, that's probably why. What you're missing is one of the least likely on-screen couples in recent memory, and one of the best. It's one of the least sentimental of its type, and one of the most mature (in all senses of the word). The Bridges of Madison County is kind of a marker in the sand for both actors. They were already legends when the movie was made, but since then, Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood seem energized creatively. So as a touchstone for their careers, or as a comparison to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I think The Bridges of Madison County is worth checking out. There's a dialogue-free moment near the end, with Eastwood and Streep in separate trucks, that sums up the entire movie in just a couple minutes. Maybe after the three (mostly great) hours of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, you can skip to the end of The Bridges of Madison County. It's a killer. Even Forrest Gump would think so.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: B

The Bridges of Madison County: B+