Not a city in Italy
I read the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” to my wife last night as a follow up to seeing the movie the night before. As I expected, there was very little overlap between film and story beyond the basic conceit–person born old and aging backwards. In the short story, Benjamin is adult-sized upon birth (his mother’s condition after such a delivery is never revealed), looks to be 70, and can speak. He marries a woman who likes older men, and then ages back to the point where she no longer attracts him and ends up an embarrassment to his son as he progresses to the point where he is younger looking than his offspring. There are some funny bits about his attempt to enter Yale and his ultimate revenge on them many years later but, unlike in the film, more is made of his condition. In the movie, few people comment on his condition–they simply accept him as different, whereas in the short story, his condition is a social embarrassment to everyone associated with him. (Fitzgerald wrote that he was inspired to write it by a remark made by Mark Twain: “It is a pity that the best part of life comes at the beginning, and the worst part at the end.”)
We watched Gran Torino last night. Eastwood is a fascinating filmmaker. His Walt is a thoroughly unlikable character at first, who growls like a dog at the many things that irritate him, an unrepentant bigot and curmudgeon. Over the course of the movie, he undergoes a transformation, an awakening of sorts, but it is a credible change. He doesn’t become a saint (not exactly)–his final words in the movie are as racist as any others he uttered earlier–but he becomes more tolerant. He actually becomes a father of sorts, for a brief while. Perhaps a better father than he’d been to his own children. His lack of patience with the youthful priest is understandable–cripes, the guy looked like he was barely out of high school, let alone the seminary. But everyone gets their due, with the assistance of Su, the nominal head-of-household next door and the ambassador between the Hmong and Eastwood’s “Wally.” His solution to the movie’s problem is a surprise, not exactly the Make My Day answer I was expecting. A fine movie, one that gave us plenty to discuss over breakfast. It has some very funny moments to balance it out.
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