In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the titular hero is a man aging backwards through 20th century American history. This mopey pseudo-picaresque poses major technical challenges and, as such, it probably should have been a Robert Zemeckis film. Instead, the project went to David Fincher, a visual whiz who doesn’t have a sentimental bone in his body.
This tension might have produced a worthwhile movie if Fincher had fought against the material. Instead, he quietly capitulates, helming a film that’s astonishing on a level of pure construction yet is rarely compelling otherwise. The framing device, in which the love of Button’s life (Cate Blanchett avec latex) urges her adult daughter (Julia Ormond) to read his diary to her on her New Orleans hospital deathbed during the onset of Hurricane Katrina scans as a risible attempt to dump some gravitas onto the proceedings.
Fincher hit a true career peak with the dense, endlessly watchable and commercially unsuccessful Zodiac; let’s hope that the mainstream approbation he’ll receive for this Gump-ian misfire doesn’t set him on his own ass-backwards path.