The strange case of Benjamin Button
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The strange case of Benjamin Button |
| Original title | The Curious Case of Benjamin Button |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2008 |
| length | DVD: 159 minutes BluRay: 166 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 10 |
| Rod | |
| Director | David Fincher |
| script |
Eric Roth Robin Swicord |
| production |
Kathleen Kennedy Frank Marshall Ceán Chaffin |
| music | Alexandre Desplat |
| camera | Claudio Miranda |
| cut |
Kirk Baxter Angus Wall |
| occupation | |
| |
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett . The plot was freely adapted from the short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald in a modern version.
action
The film begins in August 2005, two years after Benjamin's death, at the time of Hurricane Katrina , when old Daisy is dying. Her daughter Caroline, who at this point does not yet know who her father is, would like to accompany her in her final hours. Daisy tells the story of a blind watchmaker who, towards the end of the First World War, was commissioned to make a train station clock. This man had lost his only son to the war. When the clock was ceremoniously unveiled and started, the spectators were shocked because it was running backwards. The watchmaker explained that this was by no means a mistake, because he had deliberately built the clockwork - in the hope of being able to turn back time and bring his son back to life.
After this story, Daisy asks Caroline to read from the diary of a friend, Benjamin Button. The actual plot is a review of the records of Benjamin, who was born the same year the reverse clock began to tick. His mental development and height when he was born in New Orleans in 1918 are the same as that of a baby, but otherwise he has all the physical characteristics of an old man (physical infirmity, presbyopia, etc.).
After Benjamin's mother died giving birth, the father, the wealthy button manufacturer Thomas Button, horrified by the sight of his son, lays the child on the threshold of a nursing home. The operator, Queenie, takes in the foundling and receives a message from the doctor that, given its physical condition, it will probably not live long. But Benjamin's biological clock is ticking backwards and so his body is getting younger and younger.
In the home, Benjamin meets five-year-old Daisy - the granddaughter of a resident - who later becomes a successful ballerina . As Benjamin gets older, his biological father contacts him without revealing who he is. At the age of 17, Benjamin left the nursing home and went to sea.
In 1941 he met Elizabeth Abbot, wife of the British Minister of Commerce, in Murmansk, and fell in love with her. The two start an affair. After a while, Elizabeth leaves without saying goodbye to Benjamin.
After the end of the Second World War , Benjamin returned to New Orleans and met the easy-going Daisy again, who has since received an engagement in a New York ballet. Daisy tries to seduce Benjamin; However, this does not go into this. Daisy then leaves.
When Benjamin's father senses that he is about to die, he reveals himself to Benjamin: He regrets that he once gave him away as a baby, even though he had promised Benjamin's mother on deathbed that he would look after the child. He bequeathed the button factory "Button's Buttons" to his son, making him financially independent. Benjamin travels to New York to meet Daisy again, but discovers that she is now in a relationship with another man and returns home without having achieved anything.
Some time later, Daisy was hit by a car while on tour in Paris and had to end her dancing career due to a complicated broken leg. Benjamin travels to Paris to see Daisy, but she asks him to get out of her life because she can't stand Benjamin seeing her in her condition. A few years later she returns to New Orleans. Daisy and Benjamin, both around 40, start a relationship. Benjamin is at the stage of his life when his looks match his real age. They have some happy years and eventually Daisy becomes pregnant and gives birth to a healthy girl. It takes the name of Benjamin's mother Caroline.
Benjamin realizes that he will soon become a youth and a child himself and therefore cannot be a real father to his daughter. Before the daughter is old enough to build a lasting memory of him, he leaves Daisy and the child his fortune and travels the world.
When his daughter became a teenager, Benjamin - now a young man himself - returns to New Orleans to meet Daisy. She has now married. The stepfather is considered the father of the child. Daisy, in her late 50s, and Benjamin, now visually in their 20s, spend one last night of love together, but then go their separate ways again.
That ends the diary. Daisy tells the rest of the story: After Benjamin has outwardly transformed himself into a pubescent and then a child, he is accepted into the old people's home in which he grew up and which his foster mother's daughter took over from her. When Daisy visits him, he no longer recognizes her. Daisy moves into the old people's home anyway and takes care of Benjamin, who has since become a toddler and baby, who gradually loses his memory, then forgets how to walk and speak until he finally dies at the age of 85 with the body of a newborn in her arms.
At the end of the film, the hurricane hits the hospital. Daisy falls asleep peacefully and dies. The station clock, which turns counterclockwise and has since been removed, is flooded, but is still ticking.
background
- Fitzgerald's short story has long been considered impossible to film because of the reverse aging process. The combination of masks, digital technology and various light sources now enabled a consistently natural-looking implementation. Make-up designer Greg Cannom and Eric Barba, who is responsible for visual effects, created images whose digital origin is mostly hidden from viewers.
- Production costs were estimated at around $ 150 million. The film grossed around 334 million US dollars in cinemas worldwide, of which around 127 million US dollars was in US cinemas.
- It was released in theaters in the USA on December 25, 2008, in Germany on January 29, 2009 and one day later in Austria.
Literary template
The film's inspiration, the short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , was published in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald . With Fitzgerald, however, Benjamin Button is an old man at the beginning of the story, also because of his height. Since, in addition to the changed protagonist, the epoch and the place in which the story takes place are completely different in the film adaptation - Fitzgeralds' begins in New England in 1860 , that of the film in New Orleans in 1918 - the plot is also significantly changed. Unlike Fitzgerald's work, the film is primarily a love story.
music
The music for the film was composed by the French composer Alexandre Desplat and recorded with an 87-person ensemble from the Hollywood Studio Symphony. Some songs, such as Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby , were also featured in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? used. The piano piece Benjamin learns and which is repeated at the end of the film is Bethena: A Concert Waltz by Scott Joplin .
Reviews
The film was largely positively received by the film critics, but also provoked negative criticism. At Rotten Tomatoes 231 reviews were counted, of which 167 positive and 64 were negative.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung praised the film as “a great story of getting old”, which of the 13 Oscars for which it was nominated “deserved everyone”.
In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Verena Lueken particularly emphasized the montage in which Daisy was hit by a taxi as "a brilliant cinematic reflection on time and chance and on the fact that neither is under our control". Fincher managed to "develop the relationships between the characters in front of our eyes without any effort."
In the Kölner Stadtanzeiger , Frank Olbert praised the “philosophical reflection on existence, aging and death translated into pictures” and emphasized that the film traces the last moment of life “in an incomparably sensitive, even tender way”. In conclusion, he rates the film as a “masterpiece”.
The cinema magazine Cinema gave the film its highest rating with a thumbs up and the rating “100%” and praised it as a “deeply moving masterpiece and an evocation of grotesque comedy”. Pitt's acting is singled out as "his best performance to date".
Iris Radisch praised in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit that the script's deviation from the literature had "enriched and deepened" it, and rates Brad Pitt's Benjamin Button as the "most credible character in this film". Also because of its closing scene, this “ Ars Moriendi film ” will not be “forgotten so quickly”.
The strange case of Benjamin Button was praised by Laura Bader on Focus Online as a “film about the simple things in life - with unique effects and a lot of feeling”. She also highlights the game Brad Pitts, who manages "to depict the discrepancy between Benjamin's outer and inner age in an impressively believable way".
Harald Peters criticized the film in the Welt am Sonntag as "crammed full of superfluous characters and storylines". He described the main character Benjamin Button as "possibly the most boring person there is".
Lars-Olav Beier described the film in Spiegel Online as brilliant, it was the greatest cinema romance since Titanic . The film is poignant and moving like no other Hollywood production, and with 13 nominations it was one of the favorites for the 2009 Academy Awards .
The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
Awards
also nominated in the categories:
nominated in the categories:
British Academy Film Awards 2009 nominated in the categories:
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Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2009 nominated in the categories:
Directors Guild of America Award 2009
Writers Guild of America Award 2009
Screen Actors Guild Awards 2009 nominated in the categories:
nominated in the categories:
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Web links
- official page
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Article at Telepolis
- The strange case of Benjamin Button in the German dubbing file
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for The Strange Case of Benjamin Button . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, December 2008 (PDF; test number: 116 506 K).
- ↑ Age rating for The Strange Case of Benjamin Button . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ moviepilot.de: Light and digital techniques with Benjamin Button
- ↑ Alexandre Desplat scores David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button .
- ↑ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/curious_case_of_benjamin_button/
- ↑ Movie review: Boy, come back soon! ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in Süddeutsche Zeitung on January 28, 2009
- ^ Film review: Time and chance: "The strange case of Benjamin Button" in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
- ^ Film review : literary film adaptation - the strange case of Benjamin Button in Kölner Stadtanzeiger
- ^ Film review: The strange case of Benjamin Button in Cinema
- ^ Film review: Death with gold rim in Die Zeit from January 29, 2009
- ^ Film review : Moving epic about love and loss in Focus Online from January 27, 2009
- ↑ Harald Peters: Good make-up is half the battle. Retrieved January 25, 2009 .
- ↑ Lars-Olav Beier: The old man is hot. Retrieved January 29, 2009 .
