Arthur Chu (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} arctangent) wrote in adamcadre, |
Also
I think Adam's reaction to Benjamin Button (which I personally am ambivalent about) has to do with his being a narratively-oriented rather than visually-oriented moviegoer. The positive reviews I've seen of the film claim that it's a North American reclaiming of the "magic realism" style that took root and blossomed on Latin American shores far south of here, where it's not so much the narrative logic of what's going on onscreen that matters but the way the juxtaposition of the off-kilter visuals with the narrative they're supposed to be depicting creates a distance between us and the movie that makes us think.
In other words, no, on paper Button's life really isn't affected all that much by his reverse aging in all the obvious ways you would expect it to, but that's not the point. It's supposed to be the case that Button's life is a fairly "normal" if somewhat charmed life, a life that would be a fairly boring movie if Button were aging forwards ("Why did they make a movie about this guy?"), but because of the reverse-aging gimmick and the striking visual of watching the guy get younger and younger over time you pay attention to Button's changing personality and the way life events affect him in a way you normally wouldn't. The fact that you know he's actually 60 but he appears 20 makes you stare at him a little harder and gives those scenes a weird, hard-to-define pathos they wouldn't have if played straight.
That's the theory, anyway, and it obviously worked on a lot of movie reviewers. It apparently didn't work on Adam, and it didn't work on Roger Ebert either (who I think gave the movie a hard time for saying that a reverse-aging gimmick was "inherently meaningless" -- I don't think it is, but I think it *was* intentionally meaningless *in this movie*), and I'm not sure it worked on me. I think it's just one of those personality traits where this kind of "magic realism" gimmick strongly affects you or it just annoys you and keeps you from appreciating the straightforward story the gimmick is intentionally obscuring.
I think Adam's reaction to Benjamin Button (which I personally am ambivalent about) has to do with his being a narratively-oriented rather than visually-oriented moviegoer. The positive reviews I've seen of the film claim that it's a North American reclaiming of the "magic realism" style that took root and blossomed on Latin American shores far south of here, where it's not so much the narrative logic of what's going on onscreen that matters but the way the juxtaposition of the off-kilter visuals with the narrative they're supposed to be depicting creates a distance between us and the movie that makes us think.
In other words, no, on paper Button's life really isn't affected all that much by his reverse aging in all the obvious ways you would expect it to, but that's not the point. It's supposed to be the case that Button's life is a fairly "normal" if somewhat charmed life, a life that would be a fairly boring movie if Button were aging forwards ("Why did they make a movie about this guy?"), but because of the reverse-aging gimmick and the striking visual of watching the guy get younger and younger over time you pay attention to Button's changing personality and the way life events affect him in a way you normally wouldn't. The fact that you know he's actually 60 but he appears 20 makes you stare at him a little harder and gives those scenes a weird, hard-to-define pathos they wouldn't have if played straight.
That's the theory, anyway, and it obviously worked on a lot of movie reviewers. It apparently didn't work on Adam, and it didn't work on Roger Ebert either (who I think gave the movie a hard time for saying that a reverse-aging gimmick was "inherently meaningless" -- I don't think it is, but I think it *was* intentionally meaningless *in this movie*), and I'm not sure it worked on me. I think it's just one of those personality traits where this kind of "magic realism" gimmick strongly affects you or it just annoys you and keeps you from appreciating the straightforward story the gimmick is intentionally obscuring.
