Frosty here. After a long time debating, I’ve finally decided to start allowing people to contribute script reviews to Collider. The problem I’ve always had with script reviews is that the film that’s on the page is almost never what we finally see on screen. As everyone knows, so many things get altered in the creative process that it’s just not fair to judge a movie on a script that may or may not be the version they use to film with.

That’s why the script reviews that run on the site will always have an intro like this… something to remind you that what we review might not be the final shooting script. We’re also going to make sure we list what version of the script is being reviewed and we will always make sure to not reveal too much.

That said, I think it’s an exciting new arena to play in, and I look forward to many more reviews on the horizon. So now that the intro is over, I’m proud to pop Collider’s cherry with a movie that I’m dying to see… the new David Fincher/Brad Pitt film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON.

Reviewed by Dr. Gonzo

I’m a David Fincher fan through and through. I own all of his movies on DVD. I see all of them in the theater, usually more than once. I’ve written term papers on Fight Club and if I’m going to watch an Alien movie, it usually ends up being part 3. Zodiac showed major growth for Fincher as a director. The movie had maturity, intelligence and was far less reliant on exploitative violence than his earlier works. His dark, fatalistic and even nihilistic sense of ascetics seemed to have survived longer in the Hollywood machine than they would have with any other director, and Fincher has found a way to make that into a strength.

So, what’s one to make of the news that Fincher’s next film, and third collaboration with Brad Pitt, is a 161 page long romance based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald?

Well, I’m here to tell you.

Since the movie isn’t out yet, this will be light on spoilers, if only for ethical reasons. However, if you must know what happens, go to the library, the book is 85 years old. You can find this short story in Tales from the Jazz Age*, which I think is still in print. Worst comes to worst, you might get some culture—the man did write The Great Gatsby.

SPECIFICATIONS

The version I have for this film is a first draft dated 11/22/02, so the shooting draft is likely very different after 5 years. The screenplay is credited to Eric (Forrest Gump) Roth, with notes that Robin (Memoirs of a Geisha) Swicord had previously written a draft.

LOGLINE

A man is born at 70 and ages backwards. He falls in love with a woman, and as their ages intersect there is romance and drama. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett star**. David Fincher Directs.

Think Forest Gump meets Quantum Leap during a showing of Big Fish.

THE SCREENPLAY

The screenplay opens in blackness, “as everything does.” Before a very blue eye opens, leading us to an old, lived in house. We are introduced to several members of the household, most notable, an old balding redheaded woman named Daisy and her daughter Caroline. 

Daisy is dying. Caroline is trying to comfort her.

This is the opposite of the story’s opening. The story begins with the birth of Benjamin button as a 70 year old man. This reversal implies a connection between the two tellings, as if the second is part of the same eternal cycle as the first.

The first few pages of the screenplay play out as a drama about the inevitability of death. Daisy tries to point out that she was always destined to die. That she has been dying since she was born. Caroline, her daughter, doesn’t understand this.  The daughter is forced to play the mother and the mother is left to be as a child. This scene encapsulates the major theme of the movie quiet elegantly.

These pages are strikingly soft—an old dying woman, a daughter, at midlife, trying to conceive of death. Women populate the pages without a man or a hyper-masculine image in site. There is a quiet truth to be found here. Hopefully Fincher can capture it.

From here, the theme of time and fate are explored in depth. As Caroline dies, we cut back in time, roughly 100 years to see a new clock tower. Then, further back to Lafayette on the battlefield. Then up to the civil war. Then, time reverses for a bit and things start to get weird. These early scenes feel like a nod to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, if not in quality, at least in style. The opening pages set the film firmly within his genre of magical realism.

On page 11 the movie’s main story begins as Benjamin Button is actually birthed. This birth is considerably darker than that found in the book.  By page 14 it’s clear that this is not the quaint and peculiarly funny tale that was allegedly inspired by Mark Twain’s assertion that is it a shame that life’s best years are first, and worst years are last. No, instead, this is a much more bleak. The touches of Swicord, who wrote the delightfully perverse Matilda are evident in these early scenes.

The scene direction and description in the screenplay is definitely Fitzgerald-esque. Several lines from the story are alluded to in the description of things. This is a cute touch that works well to connect the story to the original, even as by page 25 (the length of the short story) nothing from the primogenitor has occurred in the screenplay.

As the screenplay unfolds, the length becomes obvious. There are many, many details here. As alluded to before, things take on the feel of Marquez’s masterpiece 100 Years of Solitude. The audience is shown the life and times of everyone with even the slightest intersection with Button. It is fitting then, that this film was shot back to back with Zodiac. Like that film, time is a central character—an ever looming boogieman creeping around the corner of every frame.

 How these various asides will be achieved is not explained. The quick 2 second scenes of the history of the old age home could easily be accomplished with still photographs (ala Run Lola Run) but many other scenes would have to be shot with movement. This film will be a visual smorgasbord if Fincher is let loose. I just have no idea how he will make it cohesive.

From here, the film tells the story of Button’s early life. Describing how he grew up in an old folk’s home where people were always dying. Periodically, he causes a death by accident.

and on page 36 mention of farts.

Farting old people is an ongoing motif in the film. That’s the kind of movie this is. One scene has a dead mother and infanticide, the next has old people farting. Masturbation is also a running motif. It’s a big departure for the guy who once killed off all the sympathetic characters from his tent pole franchise picture, in the first 2 minutes.

Around page 40 Button and Daisy finally meet. He looks 75, she looks 6. Suddenly the movie begins to feel like Lolita. But then the interaction is totally innocent and sweet.

We get lots and lots of anecdotes from the old folks. The highlights are the life story of an African Pigmy and a scene of Germans and Americans playing soccer on a WWI battlefield during a Christmas truce.

Once Button leaves the old folks home to strike out on his own, the movie really picks up as he finds adventure, war, and romance on the high seas.

And that’s the end of the first act. To reveal any more would be cruel. This movie is very inventive and most of the fun comes from the twists and turns and the way that, like Button himself, the film folds back in on itself giving locations and lines layers of meaning.

THE GOOD

I like the fact that Pitt currently has 2 upcoming films with really long ornate titles that end in his character’s name.

The sea a motif representing the separation between the living and the dead and the transition between the two, while age old, is dealt with very effectively here.

The comedy is often pitch black and, depending on how it is visualized, this movie could be amongst the best black comedies in recent memory. There are jokes, even in the serious scenes. And like how Fight Club is a very funny movie at its’ core, Button could well be a movie that grows better with time.

Also, there are moments of great, broad levity. There are scenes than children and grandparents could laugh at together (not to say that this is a family film in any way shape or form).

The repeated scenes of war as an exploration of man’s tendency towards self destruction, as juxtaposed against the fragility of life in the old folks home is wonderfully effective, even if it is hit on maybe one too many times.

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