The scene in the black church is uproarious. It’s twisted, and funny, and comes to a wonderfully unexpected conclusion. So many scenes feature African American churches as places where people just sing and dance with no real depth to them. Here, the scene is a critique on evangelicalism, and it’s damn funny even if you’re not looking for politics.

Ota Benga is a good character.

Queenie, the surrogate mother for Button is a well developed, female, African American lead. These are rare.

Button’s first sexual encounter. (Another scene that seems right out of Marquez).

Elizabeth Abbot (Button’s first love) is instantly entrancing. She’s the best character in the entire first half of the screenplay. Her dialogue seems natural and her actions never forced. I felt like I had a bit of a crush on her at times. Also, the symbolism of the rising sun in their love affair is quiet subtly brilliant.

The boat explosion sounds like an amazing visual set piece.

The second set of life lessons at the old folks home gives depth to the first and weaves the story into a more cohesive fabric.

“every year of your life is the best year of your life.”

The discussion about eyes is particularly effective.

And in the end, the three act structure moves from comedy, to romance, and inevitably towards tragedy. It’s a touch too Gumpian in this draft, but the overall plot is often moving, and always unexpected.

The ending is very, very moving.

THE BAD

Abraham Lincoln shows up on page 8. It didn’t fit and it seemed almost cartoonish.

A tremendous amount of voice over and alternating perspective occurs during the first 11 pages. The first scene is excellent, but then there are, literally, 8 temporal shifts and things, at least on the page, end up feeling a bit confusing. Also, after The Notebook was a big hit, the envelope story seems a bit cliché.

Actually seeing what Ota Benga talks about might be a bit much. Wrestling Orangutans?

The major plot doesn’t start until almost page 40. Until this point we have dozens of asides, and anecdotes and envelope stories, but we don’t have much of Benjamin himself. This is his movie, he’s in the title, but for almost an hour of screen time he’s a peripheral and reaction based character. The love story is the key to the movie. Themes and motifs are strong in the set up, but it takes FAR too long to get going. In fact, Button doesn’t make any assertive action until page 55.

We know that Benjamin Button finds his father because his last name is in the title. The subplot about the disconnected family is therefore not very dramatic, and also sort of obtuse. Yes, the senior Button is embarrassed by his peculiar son, but there is no real reason why he would run away from the police in the middle of the night and then never, ever really check in on the boy. It’s established that he wants to keep his word to the Benjamin’s mother (her last words were, keep him safe) but he doesn’t seem to do too much about that. By the time the two finally do meet on page 47, it’s because of chance. This undercuts the entire emotional backbone of the older Button. Their first scene together ends on an oddly sweet note, but it still doesn’t entirely make sense.

Despite being a fully rendered character, Queenie is still basically an Aunt Jemima type. 

I don’t for a second believe that no one would bat an eye at the idea of a man who looked to be in his late 60’s running around with a 10 year-old, alone.

Button’s speech on the pitfalls of getting younger instead of older (p.53) is a bit hackneyed. It’s much better explained in his short voice over on page 54 and could easily be done through action instead of words.

Daniel Boone is another character we don’t need to see.

Some of the romance intruige with Daisy is a bit cheesy. Yes, the tattoo sccene works better than it has any right to, but other bits, like a scene in a dance club come off as almost Freddie Prinze Jr. level. Good Freddie Prinze Jr. (like She’s All That) but still Freddie Prinze Jr..

We really don’t need to see the biblical character. In fact, that entire subplot bit stretches credulity.

The movie does ultimately feel like a sequel or knockoff of Forrest Gump.

CONCLUSION

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button looks to have a lot of potential. The comedy is there, the drama is there, the characters are there and god knows with Fincher behind the camera the visuals will be there.

This screenplay is not perfect however. For one, it’s really, really long. This is a paradox. The movie needs to be epic in scope, if only for thematic reasons. It would be absurd for the movie to be shorter, but at it is also unwieldy at its’ current length.

Much of it is funny, and there are countless great moments, but a 3 hour running time seems a bit much. Exacerbating things is the fact that, for the first half, it’s an episodic movie. Plot lines come and go, occasionally resurfacing, but usually sinking off into the abyss. This dream like quality is a strength, but at the current length, it makes the whole film rather daunting.

Though the film does not follow the book closely at all, and in fact it really feels like a wonderful companion piece to the works of Marquez more than it does to any American author, the screenplay manages to capture the basic, evocative nature of first love and loves lost. It is funny, touching, and sometimes even deep. However, the first act is almost interminable in length and the constant temporal shifts could be hard to corral into a logical story structure when visualized. Still, this could be a major turning point in the career for everyone involved, especially Tilda Swanson as Elizabeth Abbot a small, but indispensable part that is about as good a role as an actor could ever ask for.

Overall, it feels a bit like a more high end Big Fish or The Adventures of Barron Munchausen. It’s really weird, in a good way. It will be interesting to see if the similarly themed Love in the Time of Cholera (based on one of the 3 best books I have ever read***) has any effect on how this film will be viewed by the public or marketed by the studio. 

FOOTNOTES

*Or read it here (http://www.readbookonline.net/read/690/10628/) Note that I cannot guarantee the legality of this site.

**This same duo were originally supposed to star in Aronofsky’s much maligned, but truly brilliant, The Fountain.

***the other two are Camus’s The Stranger and Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.