ONE THUMBS DOWN,
ONE THUMBS UP
By the time this review is published, the 2009 Academy Awards will be old news. Of the two movies I propose to talk about this time, one is nominated for 13 Oscars and has a good chance of winning a lot of them. The other is nominated for no Oscars. Curiously, I can recommend the no-Oscar picture but must pan the other. Ah, Hollywood.
First: Thumbs Down: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald and was inspired by Mark Twain’s comment that “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18.” That’s exactly what the film is about. At the close of World War I, a clockmaker is commissioned to create a beautiful clock that will hang in the New Orleans train station. At the end of the war, receiving word that his son has died in the conflict, the clockmaker finishes the clock by making it run backwards. At the moment the armistice is signed, a boy is born in New Orleans, and -- you guessed it -- he’s born an old man. As the film progresses, old Benjamin lives his life backwards, gradually becoming younger and younger.
Flash forward about 87 years to the time of Hurricane Katrina. Daisy, an old woman on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital, is recounting to her daughter the story of her father, none other than Benjamin Button himself. Benjamin’s own father had not known what to do with his son when he was born, his wife having died in childbirth, so he left him on the steps of a nursing home. Benjamin was found by a black woman who cared for him and decided to raise him herself. As the story develops, we learn the story of Benjamin’s juvenation, including his eventual meeting and courting of Daisy and their ensuing adventures.
What sounds like an intriguing idea turns out to be, in my view, just a gimmick. There’s little depth to the film, and there are lots of other negatives, including a so-so performance by Brad Pitt as Benjamin (though it wouldn’t surprise me if he won the Best Actor Oscar) and an overdone one by Cate Blanchett. There’s plenty of unfortunate language and a decidedly non-Biblical attitude toward sexual relationships. At the end of the film, when Benjamin had become an infant, my reaction was, “So what? What have we learned?”
Film Rating: PG-13
My Rating: 2 ¼ stars (= just a tad better than average)
Second: Thumbs Up: Valkyrie
Valkyrie is the (essentially) true story of the July 20, 1944 attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler by a group of German army officers. As the movie opens, German Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is nearly killed in North Africa. He survives a bomb attack but loses an arm and an eye. Flash forward a few weeks to the war fronts in Russia and Germany. Von Stauffenberg, now convinced that der Führer is an evil man who must be killed, becomes aware of a shadowy group of German dissenters and links up with them, after which the group members work together to devise a foolproof plot to kill Hitler and take over the country by putting into effect a national emergency plan called Operation Valkyrie. The bulk of the picture deals with the planning and carrying out of the plot. Of course we all know that the plan didn’t succeed, but the film has a great deal of positive and exciting tension nonetheless.
Valkyrie stars Tom Cruise as Von Stauffenberg. Cruise, normally my least favorite actor, does a creditable job of acting this time, not flashing his pretty boy smile even once. Interestingly, the filming of Valkyrie was quite controversial in Germany; Cruise is not well liked there because of his adherence to scientology, which many Germans consider a totalitarian philosophy. However, the picture has relatively little violence for a war movie, no sexual exploits, and almost no objectionable language. It raises significant questions, foremost among which is this one: Since God ordains national leaders, can it be right to pursue assassination?
Film Rating: PG-13
My Rating: 3 stars
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