Book to Movie - Benjamin Button

Brad Pitt Stars in Film Adapted From the F. Scott Fitzgerald Classic Short Story

Jul 10, 2009

Benjamin Button is a beautifully produced and involving movie--but is it a faithful adaptation of its original source material?

Like the highly acclaimed movie Brokeback Mountain, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) was adapted from a short story. Unlike Brokeback, Benjamin Button bears little resemblance to its source material. Whether the resulting adaptation is an improvement upon the original is a judgment best left to the individual viewer.

Adaptation or Rewrite?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, best known for The Great Gatsby, in 1921. The short story provides an abbreviated tale of the life of Benjamin Button, who is born at the age of 70 and ages backwards to infancy. Set in Baltimore, the story portrays snippets of Benjamin's life as he "grows" from old age to adulthood, marrying a friend of the family, tiring of her as she ages and he grows younger, leaving for the war, and going about all the normal milestones of life, but backwards.

Other than the conceit of backward aging, the film version abandons the original story entirely. The location changes from Baltimore to New Orleans, and Benjamin (Brad Pitt), rather than being raised by his perplexed and annoyed parents, who want nothing more than for their son to just act normal, he's raised by surrogate parents when his father abandons him at a nursing home (the mother is conveniently removed from the story via death in childbirth). The wife becomes Daisy (Cate Blanchett), destined to love Benjamin for all time in spite of his odd handicap. Fitzgerald's cynical tone is transformed into a sweeping romance, framed with Daisy, now on her deathbed, revealing her past with Benjamin to their daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond).

Even the manner of Benjamin's aging is transformed in the movie version. In the story, Benjamin's backwards aging is accompanied by typical personality traits of the age he's moving through. In the movie, Benjamin behaves more like a child while he's older, and as he de-ages, begins to suffer from dementia and other symptoms of old age. By the time this two-and-a-half hour saga comes to a close, every element of Fitzgerald's orignal tale has been changed.

None of this is to say Benjamin Button is necessarily a bad movie. The change in tone and focus, though, alters the theme to the point where the backwards aging seems to have no real effect on the story. The same story of growth, change, and accepting who you are could have been told without the gimmick of Benjamin's affliction. Benjamin's "curious case" becomes a gimmick rather than the full focus of the story. The performances are excellent, the costuming and cinematography stellar. But, in the end, Benjamin Button seems to be lacking something at its core.

This might be a case where reading the story first is detrimental to enjoying the movie. These shortcomings certainly didn't keep Benjamin Button from garnering a good number of Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay (it won none of these categories). In general, Benjamin Button has much to recommend it--but not as a faithful adaptation of its original source.

The copyright of the article Book to Movie - Benjamin Button in Film Dramas Based on Books is owned by Katriena Knights. Permission to republish Book to Movie - Benjamin Button in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.