The curious case of ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’

Photography, direction, art direction, special effects: ‘crafted’ to within an inch of its life. CGI will do a lot, but it is no replacement for creative makeup and a solid performance. Which is not to say that the makeup is not astonishing in places. The aged Cate Blanchett is completely convincing, but the attempt to make a forty year old actress appear twenty by Photoshopping out the wrinkles in real time makes her face look like a mask.

The film is deeply unsatisfying in the end. Every emotional point is flagged, so it doesn’t give the audience’s imagination anywhere else to go. And the character of Benjamin gets emptier and more irritating longer the film goes on, which is very long indeed. I knew the film was too long because errant thoughts kept popping into my head. Like, does anyone else notice how the old Benjamin looks exactly like an aged Robert Redford?

Brad Pitt, an actor I like, simply doesn’t have enough to do. His requirements amount to standing around looking gormless. If someone had said “Life is like a box of chocolates”, I wouldn’t have been in the least surprised. I suppose it’s no accident, as the film has the same scriptwriter as ‘Forrest Gump’.

I’m most disappointed by the fact that a film which put all sorts of thoughts into my mind about mortality, death, time, memory, how much I miss friends who are gone, simply didn’t deserve the emotional attention it wrought from me. I resented the film for that.

And now, predictably, there are Oscar nominations in the offing, including Best Picture. It just goes to show (switching to Grumpy Old Man mode) how low critics’ expectations can be, and even more depressing, how apparently low is the standard of film culture at present.

Billy Wilder: "A little bit less"

I’m having a ball reading Cameron Crowe’s book of interviews with the great Billy Wilder. The book is a fount of hilarious stories and sharp observations from one of the funniest and sharpest men who ever worked in Hollywood.

This from a man who was then past ninety years old. He sounded like he still had a few films in him even then.

He is talking about Jack Lemmon, who was one of the great comic actors but whose broad, busy style is out of fashion now. Young Jack is working on his first movie with old pro George Cukor, and he’s trying a bit too hard.

His first day on a sound stage, with George Cukor directing, he’s all revved up. He rattles down half a page of dialogue – and then there’s “Cut!” and he looks at Cukor. Cukor comes up to him and says, “It was just wonderful, you’re going to be a big, big star. However… when it comes to that big speech, please, please, a little less, a little bit less. You know, in the theatre, we’re back in a long shot and you have to pour it on. But in film, you cut to close up and you cannot be that strong.”

So he does it again, less. And again Cukor says, “Wonderful! Absolutely marvellous. Now let’s do it again, a little bit less.” Now after ten or eleven times, Mr Cukor admonishing him “a little less,” Mr Lemmon says, “Mr Cukor, for God’s sake, you know pretty soon I won’t be acting at all.”

Cukor says, “Now you’re getting the idea.”

‘Stranger Than Fiction’

Spending some time getting to know my couch over the long weekend, I had the opportunity to see a few good films that had otherwise escaped my notice.

The best was probably ‘Stranger Than Fiction’.

“Everybody knows that your life is a story. But what if a story was your life? Harold Crick is your average IRS agent: monotonous, boring, and repetitive. But one day this all changes when Harold begins to hear an author inside his head narrating his life. The narrator it is extraordinarily accurate, and Harold recognizes the voice as an esteemed author he saw on TV. But when the narration reveals that he is going to die, Harold must find the author of the story, and ultimately his life, to convince her to change the ending of the story before it is too late.”

This is a film that reminded me of a story by Borges – not any particular story, I should say, but a kind of narrative about narrative, disguised as something else entirely.

It has predictably been called ‘Charlie Kaufman lite’. This is both a slight on Charlie Kaufman and on the film’s scriptwriter, Zach Helm. This is his first feature, and on this evidence I look forward to his next which he also directed. The script’s refreshing sense of freedom with space and time is reminiscent of Kaufman, but it doesn’t have his caustic quality; it goes for sentiment more often than not. This is not a criticism, as sentiment has a place in every story; what’s happily lacking here is mawkishness.

It occurs to me that it is the second film which owes its genesis to Robert McKee’s book “Story”, being in many clever and interesting ways, essentially about the hold that stories have over us. The other one is Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Adaptation’, where the book almost becomes a character all on its own (as does Robert McKee himself).

I should say though, that this is an example of a writer and a director at variance with each other about what the film should be, and probably what it means.

Director Marc Forster has gone for a slightly slick visual stylization, which often dilutes the film’s emotional strengths, leaving it ungrounded, not located in the real world of partitioned offices and coffee breaks. It threatens to become the film that Jim Carey (in comedy mode) never made, which is a mistake.

The visual style often threatens to overwhelm the content, especially early on when borderline obsessive-compulsive Ferrell begins to go about his day, counting toothbrush strokes and steps to the bus stop. He didn’t need to work in an office that looked Joseph K’s in Orson Welles’ ‘The Trial’ for us to get that he works in a grey, featureless world without prospects of emotional release. And did all the staff literally have to wear grey – so that when Will Ferrell comes to work in a red sweater he looks like an anarchist?

When Ferrell counts his steps and does elaborate calculations on the spot, figures appear over his head, graphics elaborate themselves across the screen, appear backwards and flip around when he passes from one side of the screen to the other. At first this appears witty, and I suppose it is in a self-conscious way, but it begins to look like a commercial for insurance. I’m glad that it only appears at the beginning of the film. For no apparent reason, it ceases to happen after the first ten minutes. The viewer asks what did it mean? And that’s the trouble. It is simply a cosmetic smear; a device that distances us from the drama. As the action begins to accumulate some emotional stake for the audience, it disappears. Someone should have told Forster to lose the idea.

Emma Thompson’s performance is beautifully judged, and near-perfect. Intense, but never giving in to the temptation to go for comedic caricature. She leaves the humanity of her character’s predicament intact, no matter how attenuated the concept. The expression on her face when she stands on a precipice above the city streets, taking in the delicious possibility of death, eyes closed with hands extended to feel the rising warm air from the street. It makes sense that such a sensualist should embrace life and not give in to the temptation. She says it’s “research”, but we don’t doubt that a few more degrees of disenchantment with life might see her confronting the temptation for real.

It was the sort of performance which reminded me of Toni Collette, especially in ‘About A Boy’, where she’s supposed to be the main character’s comically eccentric and unbalanced mother, but she’s so convincing she threatens to upset the whole trajectory of the film.

Watching the ‘Making Of’ feature on the DVD, I was struck by how perfectly uninteresting a person Marc Forster seemed to be. I apologise to his mother if she ever reads this, but during the interminable interviews with cast and crew, he fails to say anything that sheds the least bit of light on his creative motivations. There’s not a joke to be made, not an observation even the laziest couch potato couldn’t have made for him. The fact that the crew spend a lot of time telling how “great he was to work with” makes it worse.

If there’s one aspect of the screenplay which might betray Zach Helm’s lack of experience, it’s the matter of the wristwatch. The film begins with Emma Thompason’s author intoning “This is a story about a man named Harold Crick and his wristwatch”. I get the feeling that the wristwatch might have featured prominently in the original pitch. In the film however, having established itself it quickly gets in the way, so that when the narrator feels compelled to keep referring to it for no necessary reason, it becomes confusing and then irritating. Somebody should have told him to leave it in the second draft.

The cast are uniformly good; all of them showy by temperament but with their usual intensity turned right down, including Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah.

Kay Eiffel: I went out… to buy cigarettes and I figured out how to kill Harold Crick.
Penny Escher: Buying cigarettes?
Kay Eiffel: As I was… when I came out of the store I… it came to me.
Penny Escher: How?
Kay Eiffel: Well, Penny, like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method.

Movie magic in Williamstown

A few weeks ago, Julie W, who I work with, got a call from an old friend. He was Andrew O’Keefe, who she taught many years ago when she was a teacher in a little country school. She later worked for Andrew’s father for a long time and saw him grow up from a distance. Andrew’s now in his thirties and directing an independent feature film, called appropriately enough, ‘The Independent’.

It’s the tale of a gormless chap who for obscure reasons of his own, decides to run as a candidate for the seat of Richmond in a state election. Due to some unexpected events and to everyone’s surprise, he finds himself a player. Hijinks ensue.

My first contact with this outfit came when the Writer/Directors Andrew and John Studley came to our office to have a look, ask questions, talk politics and generally get in the mood. An actor called Chris Bunworth came along and stayed the rest of the day, helping us get the outfit into gear for an imminent visit by the Leader of the Opposition himself, who was coming to officially open the new building. Julie had Chris making sandwiches. I said it would make a good story for the DVD commentary. Not quite Robert De Niro on ‘Raging Bull’, but still…

Andrew was asking us about the fact that we were all wearing suits. Highly unusual, we said. Strictly for the Beazley visit. I went into a little essay on the political implications of suit wearing in various circumstances. Andrew said: “We should get you talking to our costume designer Jill.” A little globe lit up in my head. I said: “Not Jill Johanson, is it?”

Long story, but Jill is now an AFI-award nominated costume designer and very glamorous. Back when I knew her properly, we were starving students in a Brunswick share house. Actually, I was the starving student. She was busy working, making costumes for the Victorian State Opera, when it existed, making money from dresses and fabulous hats for the ladies from the leafy suburbs who populate the Spring Racing Carnival. While I was in existential crisis, she was busy. We lost contact, as you do, after she won a Churchill Fellowship and went off to London and I had a baby.

So Julie gets an invitation to be a crazy street lady in the movie. Then we get an email inviting us to be part of a crowd scene, pretending to be Party members at an old hall in Williamstown, which is no great stretch for me, as I am often in exactly this position in real life. So Ellen – the baby, who is now fifteen – trot off to Williamstown to see a movie being made.

We’re in our crowd scenes, and they are doing pick up shots with two camera crews among the people milling about. The candidate – Marty – is talking to people, pressing the flesh. Andrew comes up to me and asks me if I could ask him some hard questions, real questions that might make something a bit more interesting.

So then I am in jovial conversation with the actor Chris Bunworth, who is playing a political staffer, something like the person I am in real life. We’re chatting about the film, rehearsals, how’s it all going, et cetera, and he looks over to where I notice we are being filmed from some distance away by a camera crew which is coming in closer. Chris moves away for a moment and then approaches me with his hand outstretched and “Hi, how are you? I don’t think we’ve met before, have we? I’m Chris – and how did you come to be here tonight? Have you heard about Marty’s campaign?” And we’re in.

I realise I’m talking to Chris the character. He’s speaking slightly louder than usual as there is a bit of noise in the room, but more importantly there is a large boom microphone pointing up at us from waist height. I go just as Andrew asked me to and start in with my concern about Marty (as I understood the character when I first read the script), which was that he is essentially an empty vessel as a politician, apparently with no ideology or guiding principles apart from a vague notion about ‘serving the community’. I say that people have become disenchanted with the major parties, but I’m concerned that others are simply picking up on that and exploiting it without scruples. Is he just another Pauline Hanson?.

Chris doesn’t pause for a moment and goes into a flawless impersonation of pollie-speak. He’s talking for what seems like minutes, without saying anything at all, and like a patient on a hypnotist’s couch, I’m suddenly feeling very sleepy.

Then we’re out. Just like that. I say goodbye and wander off, buzzing.

I realised later that no matter how bad or good those seconds were, and whether they will end up in the film, it was completely absorbing improvising with an actor, even for a couple of minutes. I got a tiny taste of what makes them crave those moments when they are really in it; ‘the moment’ as they say.

Jill was there, and she was glamorous, just as I thought. Not different, though. Twelve years don’t seem to have brushed her at all. I wish I could say the same.

‘Macbeth’

I had cause to gives thanks to the god of video on the weekend when I came across a DVD of the famous 1976 production of ‘Macbeth’ produced by Trevor Nunn, starring Judi Dench and Ian McKellen.

I have always wanted to see this production ever since I glimpsed a short clip on a documentary, and those few harrowing seconds were enough.

Lady Macbeth is in torment. She enters hollow-eyed and gaunt with lack of sleep and suffering. She stares sightless into a lit candle.

What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power
to account?–Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him?

Here’s the smell of the blood still:
all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten
this little hand.

She screams in grief, a sound which starts in the back of her throat and rises to a wail of agony as she moves in an arc, clutching her whole body in a rictus of constricted pain. It is a study of sustained breath control, with the human voice nothing but an open channel of emotion.

The film is lean; nothing but the actors, and the voice. Shakespeare after Beckett.