This week we discuss one of the most popular films Cate Blanchett has ever been in, yet oddly unrecognized as one of her signature parts. It’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), directed by David Fincher and co-starring Brad Pitt.
Host: Murtada Elfadl, some of Murtada’s film writing can be found here.
Guest : Andrew Kendall, some of Andrew’s film writing can be found here.
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What is the film about?
From imdb: Tells the story of Benjamin Button, a man who starts aging backwards with bizarre consequences. Follow along by streaming on HBO Max.
What year did it come out?
Christmas 2008.
Who does Cate play?
Daisy; Benjamin’s lifelong friend, they lose each other then find each other in the middle.
How is Cate introduced?
The film opens with old Daisy in her deathbed. Then at 0:59 briefly Ballerina Daisy ie older Daisy appears for the first time her face scrubbed of wrinkles. Her story starts at 1:27.
Box Office: North America = $127,509,326 Int’l = $206,422,757.
Topics Discussed:
- Chemistry with Brad.
- Cate in love stories.. Why does no man seem worthy of her on screen?
- Outside of LOTR is one of Cate’s biggest hits; a result of wide distribution and availability. Does it reflect her screen persona ie if this was someone’s intro to her or what they know her from?
- The technology … the makeup.
- It spins tall tales, not just Benjamin’s but also Mr Gateau. Does the filmmaking fit the style of tall tales?
- Where does it stand in Fincher’s filmography. Why are his fans and the critical establishment unkind to it?
- It’s Cate Blanchett pod but let’s talk Taraji too! A very warm performance as evidenced by the laugh after she says “some joy too.” But is this character a modern version of the Mammy archetype?
- Stacked cast: Mahershala Ali, Tilda Swinton, young Elle Fanning, Julia Ormond, Jared Harris.
- Which part of the story sags a bit? Perhaps the Tilda part? Not just her story but also the tugboat.
- Awards wise the film was beloved yet oddly not Cate’s performance, why? Because she’s “the girl?” Because she was absent for long stretches of screen time? The old age makeup despite the expert “old” voice? Was the category just crowded?
Famous quotes:
- “We are meeting in the middle.”
- ‘He gives me the willies, that is not for me” said by one of the sex workers.
Costumes we loved:
- The red dress on the first date with Benjamin; memorable.
- Her ensemble in the post show party when she ditches Benjamin for a fellow dancer.
Scenes we liked:
- The short film about Daisy’s accident.
- Older Daisy when Benjamin returns as a teenager.
What seemed off :
Is the storytelling too stately and classic for this odd little story? Does the tall tale crumble under the long Dr Zhivago- like epic treatment?
Film within context of Cate’s career:
- Got her hollywood star of fame during the press for this film ie. bought for her by Paramount who released..introduced at the ceremony by Fincher and Kathleen Kennedy.
- Came at the end of a very busy few years from 2004 to 2008 where Cate was very active in movies. It was the last film she made before taking a sabbatical for 6 years to run the Sydney Theater Company. In those years she didn’t completely abandon movies (Hanna, Robin Hood) but she wasn’t as active.
Film within the context of year it’s been released:
Awards: Nominated for 13 Oscars though not for Cate.
It was a commercial hit yet has strangely disappeared from cultural discourse except for being the one side eyed within Fincher’s filmography.
What reviews said of film / Cate:
“The movie, directed by David Fincher, will probably be a hit anyway, because the gimmick (adapted by Eric Roth from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story) is fun to play around with in your head, and because it’s liberating to watch makeup gradually come off an actor instead of getting thicker (and phonier). Fitzgerald spent the later years of his life haunted by the profligacy of his early ones; to reverse time and recover his youthful body and stamina but retain his aged wisdom must have been a blessed pipe dream. Fincher is no humanist (his most vivid film is the clammy, clinical Se7en), and he refrains from milking the material for sentiment—which means the movie isn’t mawkish, but it isn’t especially vivid either. The light is yellowish and diffuse, the backdrops—the clock, a factory wall, the side of a ship—oversize. It’s a gentle expressionism, redolent of death without rattling bones
Fitzgerald’s alter-ego finds his Zelda—called, aptly enough, Daisy—when she visits the convalescent home where his horrified father abandoned him. She grows up to be Cate Blanchett, whose face is uncannily ivory-smooth. When Daisy and Benjamin meet in the middle, both at the peak of their physical perfection, they’re like two Greek statues basking in each other’s radiance, albeit with dialogue that knocks them down a few pegs: “I was thinkin’ that nothing lasts, and what a shame that is.” As they move toward death, one in the direction of infancy and dirty diapers and the other toward old age and osteoporosis, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button attains a level of quiet grace. It’s too bad that I can barely remember the movie after only a week. Nothing lasts, indeed.’ – David Edelstein, NYMag.
“Their time as lovers is the film’s most ecstatic passage, to which Blanchett (who played Pitt’s wife, under more trying circumstances, in Babel) lends all her intelligent warmth – Richard Corliss, Time.
“But the movie’s emotional center of gravity — the character who struggles and changes and feels — is Daisy, played by Ms. Blanchett from impetuous ingénue to near ghost with an almost otherworldly mixture of hauteur and heat.”- AO Scott NYTimes.
“A curious case indeed: an extravagantly ambitious movie that’s easy to admire but a challenge to love.” – Lisa Schwarzbaum EW.
Cate in relation to these co-stars, director, costume designer:
- Her only collaboration with Fincher who said about her, “I always say everyone was lucky enough to be in a Cate Blanchett movie.”
- I want her and Pitt to work again together. Also made Babel together.
Press coverage other than reviews:
Cover of Vanity Fair February 2009.
Promotional appearances:
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SUNDAYS WITH CATE 
I don’t know if this has been noticed, there is a ‘meeting in the middle’ happy times montage in the middle of the film with Benjamin and Daisy which is almost identical to another happy times montage in The Way We Were. I am guessing that film and period of filmmaking was an inspiration to Fincher, with another similarity being the physical resemblance of Pitt and Redford. I wonder if Fincher saw Brad and Cate as being the Robert and Barbara of his film.
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interesting, I havent seen The Way We Were in a long time, I’ll have to look for that the next time I see it.
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Yes, to clarify in Benjamin Button its the Twist and Shout montage which is on Youtube. The Way We Were montage is not, but its almost identical even down to the costumes! And there are moments in that montage which are like scenes in Button, of them sailing in a yacht for example. The two films I guess in some ways deal with the importance of timing in a relationship.
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