I am already on record as being a massive fan of Forrest Gump (yeah, I know, I'm a rank sentimentalist -- I also think that It's A Wonderful Life is one of the great films of all time -- so shoot me Manohla), with whom Button shares a screenwriter, Eric Roth. But Forrest was directed by Bob Zemeckis, who is not comfortable if he is not entertaining you every minute of your viewing experience. This worked fine with Forrest, which was a comically preposterous notion anchored by the extraordinarily humanizing performance of Tom Hanks.
But Button is tragically preposterous, a spacetime Evangeline, and it needs a quieter, more restrained touch. And it gets it from that master of restraint, David Fincher. Did I just say that? But it's true. Fincher's concern is to make the character of a man who is born old and spends his life growing younger poignant and believable. And damned if we can't identify with Brad Pitt, who gives a performance that is completely right for this movie.
Though Kate Blanchett, whose life spins in the opposite direction as she and Benjamin seek to connect, is fine in her role, Fincher never really establishes why she is so quickly, and inexorably, smitten with the elderly Benjamin, and this weakens the film a bit. Tilda Swinton, as the middle-aged spy's wife who makes a soul-and-bedmate of a sixtyish Button, is ravishingly needy and thoroughly convincing, and the viewer is truly sad when she leaves the stage. This is a relationship for the ages, and in a way overshadows the movie's more central relationship.
But what I guess is most heartening is that this is a grandly entertaining film that is serious and has serious integrity and actually came out of Hollywood. It wasn't made to play in Seoul. It has soul.
