After my recent posts on Harold Pinter - noting his development of the backward narrative in the play and film Betrayal - and my passing comment that I was in no hurry to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I was very interested to read this analysis of the film's alleged failures - not by a critic but John Truby, a screenwriting teacher, script editor and story consultant.
You may recall that Button concerns a man (played by Brad Pitt) who ages backwards - that is, he's born as an oldie and becomes progressively younger. This conceit, adapted by Forrest Gump screenwriter Eric Roth from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, sounds very suspiciously to me like a gimmick. Truby gives a very convincing explanation for why this central structuring idea - gimmicky or otherwise - is problematic in dramatic terms.
Extract:
"...A story that unfolds backward is extremely rare for a reason. It makes story causation virtually impossible. Or, to put it another way, you end up with the ultimate episodic story. An episodic story is one in which each event stands on its own - each scene in effect becoming mini-story - and does not connect with the other events. The whole becomes less than the sum of the parts.
"One of the only stories to unfold backwards successfully
is Harold Pinter's Betrayal. But notice that Betrayal is built on a relationship between a man and a woman. It is an organic unit from first to last. With this as a foundation, the story's backward movement, instead of being episodic, induces the audience to focus on the original causal forces that ultimately drive these two people apart."Benjamin Button is the story of one man's life. But his backward unfolding is based on the lowest form of causation, the biological. That's not what we are interested in when we see someone's life story. We want to see an unfolding based on the character's life choices. We want to see how the character's highest, most human qualities play out. It is these human elements that make plot possible, because plot is based, among other things, on the hero's ability to plot his own course.
"Because Benjamin Button tracks a man biologically getting young, he becomes nothing more than a freak who can't make any choice at all. He floats through life, an observer of the world who holds little interest for the audience..."
Truby might also have mentioned that crappy looking make-up Pitt wears for his wrinkly scenes. Even even in the stills and trailer this looks no more convincing than Dustin Hoffman's similar get-up for Little Big Man - and that was nearly 40 years ago.
Of course I may have to eat my words when I see the film. Let's just see...
8 comments:
The idea that the enemy is cancer (ie. a faceless, unbeatable enemy beyond any power of the protagonist to choose) did occur to me while watching BUTTON, but I do think the film is worthwhile nonetheless. It wouldn't be the only worthwhile film ever made where the hero was relatively passive, and where a great deal of the action floats by in montages set to voiceover and music.
What is a shame about the film is that for all its impressive design (visual and aural), it doesn't burrow deeper than it does into the meaning of the hero's dilemma in its 3 hours. It reminds me a little of a Tim Roth film called THE LEGEND OF 1900. To spend so much time on a framing device that needlessly anchors the film in a recognisable reality that the rest ignores is a great shame.
As I say though, for all that, I do like the film. It's more of a success at what it's trying to achieve than Coppola's similarly-themed YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (featuring a man and woman ageing in opposite directions at one point), though I have feelings for that film too. And it's nice to see a large scale, well budgeted film where the shadow of death has such a strong presence.
Speaking of the shadow of death, one episodic film that does work very well - for me, at least - is BRINGING OUT THE DEAD, which for me is the most recent truly worthwhile Scorsese film.
I don't think the problem with the film is that it unfolds backwards, because I don't believe it does. While Button gets younger and younger, this doesn't really affect casuality as he's still able to effect change and the narrative itself unfolds forward. (Unlike say, Memento, which really did unfold backwards and was utterly brilliant.) In the hands of a better screenwriter, Button could have been a much more active agent of his own destiny, but in this film he just passively goes through life with things happening to him - but I don't think this is a necessary outcome of the plot conceit.
The problem is Roth fails to do anything interesting with the concept. It's merely Button getting younger and younger, and very little dramatic ramifications caused. There are no unexpected complications and a potentially fascinating subject is reduced to a long drawn out meditation on death, by showing it from an unsual perspective. It's a reasonably good film but it doesnt' live up to its potential.
A story that unfolds backward is extremely rare for a reason. It makes story causation virtually impossible
Huh? I don't agree with any of this. Firstly does Ben Button actually go backwards? Or is it a forwards-told story of a man whose body gets physically 'younger'? Okay I'll leave that since I haven't seen it.
But taking Memento as an example, which was the first I recall seeing of the kind, the scenes are arranged in reverse order - so instead of cause leading to the discovery of effect, we are shown an effect and the narrative leads us to discover the cause. The revelation of Memento to me was that that worked perfectly well as a narrative and its rarity was probabaly only due to its novelty. Really there are many stories where the point of the narrative is to reveal a cause that may have taken place before the opening scenes of the story.
Agreed, there is nothing tricky about the narrative in BENJAMIN BUTTON in terms of causation. There's a bit of sleight of hand involved with the relationship of the Cate Blanchett - Julia Ormond scenes to the rest of the story, but it's all standard holding onto certain pieces of information (until well after the audience has figured them out, in this case).
I think Truby is spot on with his analysis, but I'll discuss it more once you've seen it, Lynden. I will say, though, that I was disappointed by the film. It's flat, unengaging and way too long.
“Always start your story as close to the end as possible” is an old playwright’s maxim. Memento is an extremely ingenious one-off gimmick, but (as David indicates) showing the effect before the cause is something filmmakers do all the time. I’ve Loved You So Long would be a current example.
Benjamin Button does not unfold backwards, but Trudy is onto something in his analysis – Benjamin has a different relation to causality from the rest of us, and this warps the story structure in unfamiliar ways. I can’t see why that’s a problem, unless you’re a screenwriting guru with a fixation on the “active hero”. What would these guys make of Hamlet?
Jake: well there's different schools of thought on Hamlet:
(i) Olivier's story "about a man who couldn't make up his mind" (ie. PASSIVE hero);
and (ii) Kosintsev's desire to focus on the Prince's ACTIVE side (ie a rebel struggling to expose and undermine a morally corrupt state - in this case, allegorically, the Soviet Union.
There's evidence in the original text to support both interpetations. Lesson: great drama deal with complexity and contradiction. Does this have anything to do with backward narrative? Hell no, I just wanted to get it out there.
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