the curious case of benjamin button

Hollywood can take a fascinating story and mash it up until it becomes a romantic comedy. Voila, the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It's a cute, feel-good movie: love at first sight that blossoms into true, eternal love. It's entertaining, but the cinematic version lacks both internal and external logic. The make up work was phenomenal: Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt looked old (and young). The movie was also had acceptable racism: white people are evil and materialistic and black people have soul and substance. (The one statement of race in the short story was that something along the lines that Mr. Button wished that his son were born black, which is a far stretch from the movie. Benjamin is raised by his family.) There was a lightning joke that ran throughout the movie that felt out of place (and cheap) each time. Yet, the movie maintains an American optimism throughout, which is something quite different from Christian hope. The movie is cute but lacks depth and any statement beyond the Hollywood status quo.

When I got home last night, I looked up the short story on which the movie was based, "Curious Case of Benjamin Button" by F Scott Fitzgerald. I liked the story far more than the movie. It was more edgy and substantative. Benjamin Button grows tired of the woman with whom he falls in love. The characters are more peevish, fickle and believable; and, there's the societal aspect that Fitzgerald nails better than historian; Button attempts to go to Yale, giving birth in a hospital. The short story makes sense: Benjamin is a huge baby who talks-- it's incredibly surreal but has an internal logic. But, the movie doesn't leave with that Hollywood euphoria: everybody's is beautiful, life is beautiful; ergo, I'm happy. Fitzgerald's story (on my first reading) appears to be addressing our general distaste for aberration of any kind; it's uncomfortable and forces us to change (and we resist and the abnormal people fall to the way side). Whereas, the movie seems to be about an unrealistic true love that beats all the odds.