Playing With the Truth: Film in 2010

Based on a true story.

Inspired by actual events. 

I'm not sure if it was an actual trend in 2010 or just a common trait of the few movies that I saw, but phrases like those above seemed to appear on screen in quite a lot of films, including 127 Hours, Conviction, Howl, Carlos, North Face, and even more that I didn't see, such as Made in Dagenham, Casino Jack, Eat Pray Love, I Love You Philip Morris, Mesrine: Killer Instinct & Public Enemy #1, and Nowhere Boy, to name only a few (and to say nothing of the tricky-truthy documentaries like I'm Still Here, Catfish, and Exit Through the Gift Shop).

Are there this many films based on true events every year and I only noticed it in 2010, or is this a newly developing trend? Either possibility would surprise me. If this is common every year, why have I not picked up on it so acutely, particularly considering I usually see twice as many movies as I did in 2010, and that I have a running series about movies based on real life? On the other hand, if this is a newly developing trend - why?

I'm almost positive it's the former, that this is not a new thing at all, but in any case it doesn't matter. I'm always more interested in how these films depict the truth they are meant to represent and, in doing so, how they shape our understanding and perspective on past events. For example, when I ask you to imagine the sinking of the Titanic, what images come to your mind? What about Roman gladiator fighting in the Colosseum? What do you picture when you think of John Smith and Pocahontas, or the Zodiac killer who terrorized San Francisco, or the fate of United Flight 93, or the storming of Omaha Beach on D-Day?

You see where I'm going with this: for many people, films based on true events serve as the primary influence on the subconscious in remembering or imagining those events. If you've seen those movies - Titanic, Gladiator, The New World, Zodiac, United 93, Saving Private Ryan - you bring their images to mind without even realizing it, particularly when a.) the images are astonishingly rendered (Titanic), and b.) there are few other film adaptations, documentaries, or other visual aids to provide alternative images in your mind (United 93). In essence, perception becomes reality; what we see becomes what actually happened, even if it didn't actually happen.

But does it matter when those images and those memories produce a reality that didn't actually exist? Where does the truth end and the dramatization begin, and is the truth ever interesting enough to stand on its own, free of embellishment? I'm sure it's a question as old as film itself - as art itself, really - but I'd like to consider it in the context of five films I saw in the last few months of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Fair Game, The King's Speech, and All Good Things.

The Social Network: Ahead of Its Time...Literally

After watching (most of) the trailer for The Social Network in the theater the other day, I was reminded of a recent discussion about it at Living in Cinema in which I wondered aloud why this movie is being made in 2010.

It's not as if there was a recent New York Times-bestseller about the founding of Facebook and David Fincher and Sony Pictures are cashing in on the hype. (Update: I'm an idiot. Apparently there was such a book, "The Accidental Billionaires", written just last year. Has anyone read it?) It's not as if Facebook has changed or significantly evolved in recent years, aside from a growing user base and some negligible dust-ups about privacy. It's not as if Mark Zuckerberg is some megalomaniacal, misunderstood genius that the walls of Harvard just couldn't contain, or that his behavior could be considered anything other than extraordinarily normal for a 26 year-old with $4 billion in his pocket. And it's not as if the story behind Facebook, such as it's publicly known, is any more special than the story behind, say, AOL or Google.

REVIEW: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (A-)

As I've mentioned in my Reel Life installments, the best material for movies often comes from the simplest of stories. Though obviously a work of fiction, F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story from 1921, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", is a good example of such high-potential material. The set-up is simply this: Benjamin Button ages backwards. No explanation, no crazy twists, just leave the rest for the reader to interpret.

Or to Eric Roth, the Forrest Gump screenwriter who adapted "Button" for the (surprisingly) first ever film based on the story, and didn't take many risks in departing from Gump's Oscar-winning formula (here, instead of "You never know what you gonna get," it's "You never know what's coming for ya."). Directed by David Fincher (Zodiac), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a wonder to behold for several reasons.

For starters, Fincher's vision of early 20th-century New Orleans is enchanting. I'm always one to be behind the curve on things, and it didn't strike me until mid-way through this movie that nearly all of Fincher's films look as if they were filmed on the same sound stage: Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and Zodiac. There is a grittiness, a blue steely look that he has mastered, and it comes through again in Benjamin Button even if the color hue has changed from blue-gray to gold. Every detail on the screen is carefully created; the gaslamps, the snowflakes, the fog and the shadows have as much presence as the characters. More than distract, the lighting and cinematography draw you in and allow you to just sit, study, and savor the images, as if in a museum.

Which is not to say that the humans don't grab you as well. Reteaming with Fincher for the first time in nearly a decade, Brad Pitt brings to the table perhaps his most ambitious performance to date as the title character. Nothing against the sexy hardbody Pitt (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Troy) or the goofy dumbbell Pitt (Snatch, Burn After Reading), but I'm really starting to like the "anti-Pitt" Pitt (Babel, The Assassination of Jesse James...) - the one that doesn't inhabit so much of the screen, whether voluntarily or accidentally. Never has Pitt had to express so much with his eyes than in Benjamin Button, and he excels largely because he realizes this - and he doesn't try to out-Gump Tom Hanks.

Speaking of Gump - though Cate Blanchett (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) and Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading) are predictably impressive, neither has much material to work with here, and neither is as memorable as Robin Wright Penn's Jenny Curran Gump. As I haven't read Fitzgerald's story, it's unclear to me whether the romantic angle was played up for the film. If so, consider it an ambitious failure. Either due to the increasingly annoying cuts to the present day or the mere fact that neither actress appeared to have much on-screen chemistry with Pitt, the most glaring problem in Button is that the love story isn't very moving, at least not consistently so.

More emotional juice may have been squeezed out of the relationship between Benjamin Button and his father (Jason Flemyng) or adoptive mother (perfectly played by Taraji P. Henson), but alas, our time with them is disproportionately short. Of course, time is of the essence in a story like this, and telling a man's life story from beginning to end, or rather end to beginning, doesn't allow for many detours.

A little boy learns to walk for the first time...

In the end, Benjamin Button is possibly more cryptic than it is "curious". Fincher's cloaked production style presents it as more of a dream than it should be, which enriches the cinematic experience but partly weakens our ability to access the profound philosophies inherent in such a tall tale. Moreover, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is so long that, like all great dreams, you have to almost sit and ponder it to remember the best parts (repeated viewings may help, and I'm fully expecting Button to live longer than its time in the theater). But it's also captivating and thought-provoking, especially for those who look at life's "big picture". Forrest Gump may have had more whimsy and it may have even been a better movie (not forgetting that it touched on a number of social issues where Benjamin Button took a pass), but for those who like their films to have a little more mysticism, elegance and intellectual potency, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will be enthralling.

Grade:
Writing - 8
Acting - 10
Production - 9
Emotional Impact - 8
Music - 5
Social Significance - 5

Total: 45/50= 90% = A-