Jeffrey Wells has posted some news from his chums attending the Telluride Film Festival after they saw a 20-minute reel of David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the film many are trying to bad mouth based on the length and whatever other reason they can find. However, the information Wells has posted actually makes me interested instead of wary.
My friends had one unqualified positive reaction, which was to the performance by Taraji P. Henson as Brad Pitt’s adoptive mother. But beyond that, the Button footage felt vaguely underwhelming, they said.
It just wasn’t particularly exciting or engrossing, one explained. Excellent visual effects (old Pitt as a baby, etc.) and fine cinematography but with a kind of enervated, waiting-for-something-to-happen quality. The footage showed portions of the entire film, the other friend said, but in a way that kept you from getting into it with cuts coming too abruptly. And so people were kind of…whatever, grunting and muttering on the way out.
To sum this up, it seems these people saw several portions of “a little over two and half hours” long film and didn’t get the climax they were looking for. Hmmmmm… I can just imagine what kind of opinion these geniuses would have come out with after seeing something of a similar reel of Fincher’s Zodiac, a film that became a critical darling, especially after it was snubbed by the Academy.
Zodiac was filled with that “waiting-for-something-to-happen” tone. It was an investigative drama that had very little to no action yet the performances and the telling of the story is what moved it along and made it so great. All of the positives from the performance by Henson, the visual effects and the cinematography is everything that made Zodiac great. I am energized by this news considering that one of the dolts that sent the news to Wells went on to say Fincher has “peaked” and that “it’s all downhill from here on.” Like Wells I say, “Oh, give me an effin’ break!”
However, one of the commenters at Hollywood-Elsewhere, Karina Longworth at Spout, has posted her own detailed reaction to the footage. Saying Fincher called the 20 minutes “a series of scenelets”. I didn’t read what she had to say because I like to go in surprised and expecting as little as possible, but I did go far enough to read her say the footage was “impressive” and “absolutely gorgeous”. That’s all I need for now, but you can get the rest right here.
On a final note, Anne Thompson at Variety gave very little opinion of the footage, but she did say, “Certainly there’s never been anything like it.”
