Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett reunite for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a film about why youth is wasted on the young. The cast and director talk to Michele Manelis
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In our youth-obsessed culture, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button offers a whimsical and radically unconventional take on the ageing process and the passage of time itself.
In a couple of Oscar-worthy performances by Brad Pitt, who turns 45 this month, and Cate Blanchett, 39, this ambitious tale is adapted from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Benjamin Button was five years in the making and cost an estimated US$150 million. A surprising choice of material by director David Fincher, who Pitt jokingly refers to as "the Prince of Darkness," due to his penchant for grisly and violent fare such as Fight Club, Seven, Panic Room, and most recently, Zodiac.
Perhaps Fincher, 46, is getting milder with age, asking the bigger questions of life, and venturing away from his comfort zone associated with the uglier side of humanity. At a press conference in San Francisco, Fincher said of his brutal resume, "Well, someone's got to make those movies."
The premise of this original story surrounds the lives of Benjamin Button (Pitt), who is born in his 80s, battling with severe arthritis and other elderly ailments as he ages backwards until reaching the end of his life in his infancy. In this heartbreaking and romantic tale, he meets the love of his life, Daisy, (Blanchett) when she's a child. And as their lives are played out, they eventually meet in the middle in their 30s and 40s where they spend their best years as lovers.
It's a melancholy and in some ways cautionary tale about the fleeting reality of life and the responsibility to ourselves to make the most of it.
The movie is narrated by Julia Ormond, whom we haven't seen much since the 90s when she starred in movies including Legends of the Fall (as Pitt's love interest), Sabrina, and First Knight.
In Button she plays Blanchett's daughter and through reading Button's diary to her dying mother discovers the truth about her origins.
Surprisingly, it's not too disconcerting to see Pitt's heavily made-up head digitally imposed on other bodies, however, as the audience, we know it's only a matter of time until we see the familiar Hollywood icon and paparazzi-plagued actor as the movie progresses.
"I've never understood it, but chicks seem to dig him," Fincher deadpans. "I think he's great and I'm so happy he did it. It's one of those roles that requires a movie star."
Says Pitt: "I knew this film was going to require prosthetics, there was a love story, there were reasons why I thought I should probably not partake in this one. But when I sat down with Finch and with Eric Roth, and Finch had this lovely description, talking about the dents of time, the impressions that people leave on you for your evolution, I thought it was worth going for."
An impressive visual feat, even for sophisticated audiences, the movie deliver groundbreaking special effects (Fincher relied on his special effects training from his days at George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic) to transform the actors through the years. Prosthetics were worn by both actors in their dotage. Says Pitt of the physical burden, "I thought it would be more cumbersome than it was. It was surprisingly manageable, once you got it all on, which was a bit of an effort, but it was all right," he says. "And you could be more vulnerable because you had the markings on you, the scars of time and a layer of silicone."
Blanchett, who played Pitt's wife in Babel, says, "Watching the film, I was so mesmerised and proud to be a part of a film where every single frame is necessary, and beautiful, and essential, and it's a project in which technology has been absolutely harnessed to the storytelling. And somehow David has been able to make something that's potentially impossible and fantastical, become utterly realistic. And therefore I think deeply emotional."
This thought-provoking epic, just shy of three hours, has a Forrest Gump quality to it, no coincidence as Eric Roth wrote both screenplays. And for Pitt, playing a man going through the ravages of time made him reassess his life. "It made me think a lot about the course of time and the fragility of it all. You question yourself, how do I spend that time? And, am I at mid life? Am I half way there? Am I a little over halfway? Am I almost at the end?" he says, rhetorically. "And you know what, I don't know, but how do I want to spend that time? I certainly don't want to spend it being angry at the people I love in any way. I want to spend that time with value. This film focuses on that 95 per cent that's universal in all of us and that's what I love about it."
Pitt, the famous father of six, raising them with Angelina Jolie, says of his kids seeing his physical transformation, "They came on set when I had the old age gear on. They were completely unaffected by it," he laughs. "They didn't even notice it, which was odd."
There were many challenges for the actors. Blanchett says it was the technical aspect of the laborious aging process. "You really needed stamina. If you had a big prosthetic day, you'd start at 4.30 in the morning, fall asleep, then wake up at 11am and be into performance mode, knowing the clock was ticking on the pieces of plastic on your face which could drip off at any minute. So it was race against time."
Set primarily in New Orleans - the eras range from the end of the first World War to the outbreak of World War II, all the while jumping back and forth though Ormond's reading to Blanchett on her deathbed, while they are in the first throes of Hurricane Katrina. Pitt, who has come to the aid of many victims of Katrina says, "New Orleans is very dear to me, and permeates the film and somehow grounds it because it's mystical and there's mystery in all things in New Orleans."
Perfectly cast, Tilda Swinton shows up playing an upper class English-woman with whom Button has an affair during one of his sea-faring adventures, and Ormond, who has spent much of her cinematic career sobbing, gets to hold back her emotions this time.
Ormond says, "This movie is not commercial, yet it's universal. It's not saccharine, it's very real. When you watch the heaviest moments of the film it's about the stuff that isn't played. It resonates for everyone."
The heady and emotional subject matter of the film lends itself to thoughts of what's in store for the future. Says Blanchett, "There's no bigger issue facing us as a species right now than climate change. And it's pretty scary. But there is an opportunity to reassess the way we live. I think about that every day."
Anyone who has contemplated his own mortality will find the idea of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button compelling. And in these uncertain economic and environmentally fearful times, Fincher's escapist and magical fairy tale is more than timely.
LOWDOWN
What: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton; directed by David Fincher from a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
When and where: Opens at cinemas on Boxing Day.
