So, when we were in Boston for the holidays, we brought our screeners with us (we're fortunate that, even though we're only eligible to vote for the Writer's Guild awards and not the Academy Awards, the studios assume even writers would rather watch a movie than read one). And we sat down with Christina's parents to watch THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON.
Now, we have a certain attachment to this story. We adapted the original F. Scott Fitzgerald story into a graphic novel for Quirk Books. Our adaptation was 100% faithful, and our job there wasn't to add to the story or to change it. It was simply to build the blueprint of a comic from it, and then step back at let Kevin Cornell's gorgeous artwork do the rest.
We immersed ourself in the story, despite it only being 17 pages long when published. We grew very fond of it, but we could also see the problems, especially the problems that would come with trying to make a movie from it. The women in the story needed serious fleshing out, the physical impossibility of a mother giving birth to a full grown elderly man and surviving (not to mention not having the size of the baby show was before birth) would need to be explained... lots would have to change for the more literal-minded Hollywood.
But a movie could be made from this story, one with a huge scope and a lot of humor and something intriguing to say about a couple of things - one, how the bookends of life, infancy and old age, are complete mirrors of one another, and two, how our emotional state isn't based on our age or even our experience, but instead upon the physical age of our bodies, and how that age shapes our hormones, our instincts and our desires.
We read an article about the film in Entertainment Weekly, which described David Fincher bringing "his own take" to the story, by insisting it should not be an epic love story. And we knew there was trouble ahead. Because no one should have to FIGHT to make that point. Anyone who read the short story knows it's not a love story at all, much less an epic one. Benjamin marries when he's young and his body old. And as he gets older, his body gets younger, and he gets wilder. This happens while his wife gets older... and he loses interest in her. It's a credit to Fitzgerald that we still care about the schmuck after that, but we do. Still, a romance, this is not.
The idea that Hollywood wanted to make it one was alarming. The notion that Fincher was against it was reassuring.
So we approached the film unsure of what to expect.
The DVD was on 2 discs, and I stopped watching about 90% of the way through disc one.
I could review it with a handful of words: Pointless, pretentious, boring, and a betrayal of Fitzgerald.
But because I am (as anyone who knows me can attest) more verbose, I will go a little more in depth, not on the first few, as they are subjective (I found it pointless, pretentious and boring. Your mileage may vary).
I'll focus on the last: this movie was a complete and utter betrayal of the story.
I'm not dumb. I know, as most people do, that a prose work like a novel will have to become something different when adapted into a film. It has to. Different medium, different storytelling needs. This is all the more necessary with a short story, which will require fleshing out the story to make it a full film narrative.
The key is to keep the spirit of the original piece.
And this is the biggest way in which the film fails, utterly and completely. Some people are suggesting Eric Roth could (or worse, should) get an Oscar nomination for Adapted Screenplay. Those people should either be shot, or should have someone explain the concept of 'adapting' to them. Perhaps both.
This isn't an adaptation. It's a completely new story, build around the concept of aging backwards, and beyond that retaining only (no joke) Benjamin's name and the title.
Little changes, like changing the name of Benjamin's father, suggest Roth may not have even read the story. The bigger changes, like making it so that Benjamin's emotions reflect his age, not his body's age, pretty much confirm that Roth couldn't have. Worse, they take the heart of what Fitzgerald was doing with his story, and turn it upside down.
Fitzgerald wrote a whimsical tale musing on how, even if our bodies aged backwards, certain things remain the same. A person whose body looks and feels 70 will behave like a 70 year old, even if he's a newborn. And a person whose body looks and feels like a teenager will mope and have out of control emotions, even if he's been alive for 50+ years and experienced a lifetime of wisdom.
In the movie, however, Benjamin is just a person with an odd physical disability. For the first 10 years of his life, his moods were those of a child growing from 0-10 years old, even if his body looked like an old man's. This way of emotionally aging continued throughout the film, or at least as far as I could tolerate watching it.
I suspect this was done to make the epic love story they tried to build not seem creepy (guess Fincher lost that one). You see, when Benjamin has a 70 year old body, he's really 13, so it's okay that he gets a crush on a 13 year old girl.
There are changes everywhere. Some, like the father's name, seem kinda pointless, but don't really betray the spirit of the short story. Others, like giving Benjamin a happy home of senior citizens to grow up in, continue to miss the entire point of the story.
Like I said, everyone knows a story has to change to become a film.
But get the spirit of the piece right.
Then there's the pointless, pretentious and boring part. That makes it all the more painful because at least if it were a complete betrayal of Fitzgerald and a decent film, I might have watched the whole thing.
Anyway, if you saw this movie, you have my condolences. If you haven't, don't bother. Check out the original story, or if you want something more visual, check out what Kevin Cornell's done with it.
I'm not just pimping our stuff here - I think you should all check out the prose story first and foremost (though I'd love it if you checked out the graphic novel).
I'm just trying to undo the damage this story has taken at the hands of people who really should have known better. Because if they didn't respect the Fitzgerald story, why'd they want to make a movie of it?
Besides, if they don't have any respect at all for F. Scott Fitzgerald, they don't deserve any of my respect or time.
