It’s holiday week, and you know what that means — lots of us will be going to the movies! We’ll probably be exchanging gifts, preparing big meals, and lighting candles and menorahs, too; but many families will take advantage of a day or days off to catch a flick they haven’t had time to see, or one that’s opening now.
One of those movies is “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, which is an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic short story.
Like me, you’ve probably seen the trailer or the television commercial for “Benjamin Button,” and even read a review or three. Brad Pitt has waxed sentimental about how wonderful it is that the “infant” Benjamin is raised by an African-American woman, and photos released show a wizened baby curled in a fetal position, held by Taraji P. Henson.
I’m intrigued by this. If you read the original story, you’ll see that things happen just a tad differently. Benjamin is born as a full-grown and quite difficult to hide seventy-something man, whose legs hang over the hospital bassinette and whose beard hangs over his wrinkled chest. Witness:
Even after the new addition to the Button family had had his hair cut short and then dyed to a sparse unnatural black, had had his face shaved so dose that it glistened, and had been attired in small-boy clothes made to order by a flabbergasted tailor, it was impossible for Button to ignore the fact that his son was a excuse for a first family baby. Despite his aged stoop, Benjamin Button–for it was by this name they called him instead of by the appropriate but invidious Methuselah–was five feet eight inches tall. His clothes did not conceal this, nor did the clipping and dyeing of his eyebrows disguise the fact that the eyes under–were faded and watery and tired. In fact, the baby-nurse who had been engaged in advance left the house after one look, in a state of considerable indignation.
But Mr. Button persisted in his unwavering purpose. Benjamin was a baby, and a baby he should remain. At first he declared that if Benjamin didn’t like warm milk he could go without food altogether, but he was finally prevailed upon to allow his son bread and butter, and even oatmeal by way of a compromise. One day he brought home a rattle and, giving it to Benjamin, insisted in no uncertain terms that he should “play with it,” whereupon the old man took it with–a weary expression and could be heard jingling it obediently at intervals throughout the day.
There can be no doubt, though, that the rattle bored him, and that he found other and more soothing amusements when he was left alone. For instance, Mr. Button discovered one day that during the preceding week be had smoked more cigars than ever before–a phenomenon, which was explained a few days later when, entering the nursery unexpectedly, he found the room full of faint blue haze and Benjamin, with a guilty expression on his face, trying to conceal the butt of a dark Havana. This, of course, called for a severe spanking, but Mr. Button found that he could not bring himself to administer it. He merely warned his son that he would “stunt his growth.”
Every adaptation tells its own story, and every adaptation is, well, adapted. It’s not the original, and often it veers sharply away from the original’s plot.
But I sharply dislike adaptations that veer this far from the original’s spirit. Read Fitzgerald’s wonderful story, and you’ll get humor, irony, satire, and a keen sense of human folly. Watch the adaptation, and what do you get? Hmmmmm, what a surprise, given that it’s written by Eric Roth, the screenwriter behind “Forrest Gump.” You get sentimentality, an unreliable narrator who is a Witness to History, and a lot of scenery.
I’ve used this example before, but I’m happy to use it again: There’s an old New Yorker cartoon of a little boy whose mother tries to serve him a vegetable in yet another guise. The caption: “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it!” Go ahead and change the setting of “Benjamin Button” from Baltimore to New Orleans, but don’t change the story’s mojo.
Here’s my question for the day: What’s your least-favorite movie adaptation, and why?
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According to Meyer, the growth of what he terms “omnimedia” and “omnimarketing” have broken down the ties between people, making it easier for us to be discourteous and disrespectful at our various technological removes and making it harder for us to come out of our individual shells and “only connect,” as R. Buckminster Fuller would remind us to do.
As I type, President-Elect Obama is announcing his pick for Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan, and speaking about the importance of easing our children away from video games and “reading to them at night” in the struggle to make our nation’s education system stronger. Those of us who love books and reading know that the Newbery debate isn’t just some frivolous chat about fiction; it’s about keeping kids engaged with narratives at a crucial stage, ages 8-12.
