The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S COMING?)

[The last of the long delayed draft posts, this bust was prompted by a fantasy sequence from another movie, in which Ben Stiller imagines himself and Kristen Wiig enacting a confused scene from this movie, despite their not having seen it. You just know when comedians make a joke about not having seen a movie, there's something worth busting there ;)

Unfortunately, it's another example of a film that presents the problem of how best to refer to characters when they're portrayed by various actors, at different stages of their lives. On this occasion I've decided to fudge the answer, because the principals are so iconic, by performing an ultra-bust.]

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) is an American fantasy drama film directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

In the end, a hospital bed-bound, former dancer mother, Cate Blanchett, gets distraction from an approaching hurricane and the end-of-life care she is receiving, by persuading her daughter to read to her from a hand written manuscript, stuffed full of postcards, letters and mementos, that recount what is either a very tall tale or the extraordinary life-history of her real father, Brad Pitt, a man the daughter once met briefly and who apparently lived his life growing younger.

Always on the periphery of landmark American events spanning the end of the Great War, to the devastation of hurricane Katrina, it is the Grim Reaper's ever-presence that overshadows Pitt's life, begun as a prematurely geriatric foundling, after his mother dies in childbirth, raised by a woman with the motto "you never know what's coming", amongst the residents of the elderly care home she runs, and ending with him shuffling off this mortal coil, despite the appearance of a perfectly healthy infant, in the very same home, some eighty years later, in the arms of his first love and eventual wife, Blanchett, who he met there as a "man-boy" when she was a girl, many years before.


It's hard not to read this allegorical muse on the fleeting nature of human existence, as one of a few, so far rather unconvincing attempts, on David Fincher's part, to prove that he is more than just a thrill-master par excellence.

Bookended by the story of a blind clockmaker (surly a reference to an argument against the existence of God) who constructs a municipal time-piece that runs backwards, strangely mirroring the inverted life of the eponymous hero, perhaps not since the Bible, has there been a narrative so packed with stuff that just doesn't make sense, even overlooking the story's central conceit of a man who ages in reverse, and seems strangely apart from his surrounding, despite award winning special effects and make-up. And it's not just the set that Pitt is detached from, perpetually out of step with the changing times around him.

Okay, Pitt does learn life lessons from a succession of colourful characters, including a womanising pygmy, a self-tattooed boozing tugboat captain, the loose-knickered wife of a British spy, and a seven-time victim of lightening strikes fellow care home resident. But none of them amount to much more that "life's short, make the most of it." And all that in just a minute over two and three quarter hours!

Clearly, however you care to slice it, what's coming is death!

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitty_(2013_film)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curious_Case_of_Benjamin_Button_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker

The Tree of Life (2011)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER THE EMPEROR IS NAKED?*)

[Now for a bust of a movie so critically acclaimed, you might even be tempted to watch it for yourself. Just don't say I didn't warn you.]

The Tree of Life (2011) is an American existential narrative film written and directed by Terrence Malick, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain.

In the end, middle-aged grown-up eldest son, Sean Penn, of religiously observant parents, Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, experiences a dream-like, shore-line encounter with the people he knew as a child, one of whom, his younger brother, died aged nineteen.

Scenes depicting the creation of the universe, the formation of the stars and planets, and the emergence and development of life on Earth, are inter-cut with those of a young Christian couple struggling to stay together while raising three sons, confused and frightened by the abuse their loving and compassionate mother, Chastain, suffers at the hands of domineering and disillusioned father, Pitt, in what appears to them to be an arbitrarily cruel world.

This movie is crammed full of symbolism, some of which even I needed Wikipedia's help spotting!

Partly raised and currently resident in Texas (where they like to do things differently) Terrence Malick has spent a career making movies that are more art than entertainment, loved by the critics and loathed by practically everyone else. That he is held in such high regard by those either in the film industry or engaged in reporting on it, probably says more about their desire to demonstrate sophistication and erudition, than it does about Malick's work.

Don't be fooled by the Malick's courtiers, though. The best that can be said for this, and his other movies, is that they look good on the big screen, because he does have an eye for a pretty picture. Or rather, in this case, the people who he got to do his potted histories of creation and evolution special effects have.

When left to his own devices, Malick's tendency is to use unusual camera angles, wide-angle lenses and uncomfortably extreme close-ups to fill the screen with actors or objects he finds interesting. Whether you find them interesting probably depends on whether you enjoy watching other peoples' home-movies, which is exactly what this film feels like, albeit one with Hollywood stars and production values.

What Malick does manage to achieve, though, with a combination of image and sound, is a sense of what it feels like to be alive. Whether you need a film maker to tell you what it feels like to be alive, is another matter.

Wikipedia describe this film as an "experimental drama". I'm not sure whether that's because they don't know what a drama is, or can't spell existential or are just being polite? Whatever, if you approach this movie hoping to be entertained, be prepared for disappointment. Unless, that is, your idea of being entertained is a two hour, twenty minute tour of an art gallery filled with someone else's holiday snaps.

*[The spoiler alert refers to the Hans Christian Andersen tale of The Emperor's New Clothes. You can decide for yourself, if you really want to, but, for me, the Emperor is definitely starkers ;)]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tree_of_Life_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes

Fury (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER A LONG-SERVING TANK CREW MAKE IT THROUGH THE WAR?)

[I have a few more historic busts waiting to be posted, but here is a bust of a much more recent movie that may very well clean up, come this award season.]

Fury (2014) is an American World War II film, written and directed by David Ayer, starring Brad Pitt and Logan Lerman.

In the end, having fought together from North Africa all the way into the heart of Germany, with barely weeks of the war in Europe remaining, a tank commander, Brad Pitt, and his tight-knit crew are wiped out, when their immobilised tank is overrun by an SS counter-attack, the only survivor of which is their inexperienced and ill-prepared recent replacement machine-gunner, Logan Lerman.

With Allied tank numbers dwindling from the hammering they are taking from technically superior German counterparts, Pitt and his tank, sole survivor of a recent engagement that cost the life of one of his crew, is ordered to join up with another group, tasked with the relief of a contingent who ran into fierce resistance, en route to capturing a nearby town.

Dismayed by being assigned a recently enlisted private, trained in typing, Pitt is furious with his new machine-gunner, Lerman, for hesitating during an ambush, when confronted by a German child soldier, that results in the loss of the column's lead tank and the unit's only officer.

Lerman's refusal to pull the trigger, even in the heat of battle, is further confirmed when Pitt, having assumed command, fails to bully him into shooting a German captured wearing an American soldier's overcoat during the fight to relieve the pinned down troops.

In fact, the only time Lerman seems willing to fire on the enemy, is to dispatch a group of them suffering terrible phosphorus burns from an incendiary shell fired during the assault on the forces defending the nearby town. Seeing this as, at least, a start, Pitt tries to further impress upon Lerman the desperate nature of the enemy they face by showing him a room full of Nazi suicide victims, discovered in the town they have taken.

Pitt then confounds the brutal impression he has made on Lerman as a rabid German hater, when, instead of assaulting a pair of frightened women they find hiding in an apartment, he offers them food and persuades them to cook a meal for them, even defending the women against the drunken advances of the other members of his crew, who show up uninvited.

Tragically, just as the tank crews are being called away to secure a vital crossroad under threat, enemy shelling demolishes the apartment, killing the women, plunging Lerman into despair.

Racing to their objective, Pitt and his crew are lucky to survive a deadly encounter with a much more powerful German tank, that lays waste to all three of the others in their company, before they finally manage to destroy it.

Disastrously blowing off one of their tank's tracks on a mine, at the deserted crossroad, Pitt sends Lerman ahead to spot for enemy, only for him to return, before the crew are able to effect a repair, with a panicked report of a large company of well armed and motivated SS troops, bearing down on their position.

Unable to radio for support, and knowing that their stricken vehicle is all that lies between the enemy and essential Allied supply lines, Pitt and his crew reluctantly elect to remain with it and hold off the Germans for as long as they are able, even though they cannot possibly survive.

Doing their best to disguise the tank as an abandoned wreck, the crew nervously hunker down and prepare themselves for the coming storm.

Waiting until the very last moment before opening fire, the tank's gunner manages to take out the enemy's armoured supply vehicles, while the whole crew set about mowing down as many of the troops swarming round them, as possible.

Eventually running low on ammunition, the crew is forced out of the relative safety of the tank's interior to search for weapons with which to continue the fight, including Lerman, who has at last found his fighting legs. But inevitably the enemy's overwhelming numbers begin to take their toll.

First the tank's loader is caught by a bullet, as he scrambles for cover through a turret hatch. Then the driver is forced to throw himself on a live grenade he drops after being hit.

Finally the gunner is killed, when he unexpectedly lunges out of his hatch, by a sniper's bullet meant for Pitt, who has been operating the turret mounted machine-gun, but who is forced back inside the tank after taking several hits.

Now completely out of bullets, the terrified Lerman confesses to Pitt that he is scared and contemplating surrender, something Pitt advises him would be a very bad idea. Rather Lerman should use the tank's escape hatch, when they are finally overrun, which Lerman duly does, narrowly avoiding the blast from German stick grenades that kill Pitt.

Cowering in the mud, Lerman is only saved when a very young SS soldier, searching beneath the tank with a flash-light, decides not to give him away.

The next morning, Lerman is declared a hero, by the American troops who discover him to be the tank crew's sole survivor, amongst a wasteland of dead German soldiers.


Too often in war movies, the enemy are presented as faceless devils, who are only getting what is coming to them. Certainly writer/director, David Ayer takes every opportunity to paint the eventual recipients of his heroes' fury blacker than black, at pains to distinguish them from the regular German army, and the women and children forcibly co-opted into taking up arms. So that by the time Pitt and his crew, who are, after all, by then only fighting to save the lives of others, start cutting the enemy down, like so much wheat, the audience never gives the massacre they are committing a second thought.

In truth though, there is never any doubt that war has turned Pitt and his men into repellent blood-thirsty killers, perhaps at last only getting what they themselves deserve. Even the initially reluctant Lerman eventually agrees with them than killing Germans is the best job in the world. Then again, the mercy he is shown does remind us that not everyone who wore the SS uniform was necessarily blacker than black.

But, when all is said and done, no doubt, with his portrayal of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009), Jewish revenge fantasy's swastika carving, comic-book Nazi hunter, to mind, Pitt does deliver a compellingly realistic power performance, as a brutally conflicted, murderous warrior, desperately anticipating the end of hostilities, which is sure to receive award recognition. Indeed, any of his co-stars could find themselves similarly honoured, as should Ayer. For not since Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot (1981) has the incomprehensible savagery, claustrophobic fear and random tragedy of warfare been so unflinchingly rendered.

Unmissable.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fury_(2014_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglourious_Basterds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Boot