I remember you from that scene! Your line got a laugh from the audience so well done.
]]>Don’t be bummed. Go and see it for yourself and put the rest out of your mind.
Some of my favorite movies are ones that didn’t receive unanimously glowing reviews (i.e., Synechodche, New York).
You’ve read the short story, so you know its about 23 pages long, depending on the font and paper size. If it were a completely faithful adaptation, the film would be no longer than a half hour–tops. Events move rapidly in the story. So Roth, in making a feature film adaptation, had to first of all expand it.
And I’ve read that he kept the characters names and Button’s condition, but sort of wrote his own version of the story. Which is fine by me. Roth knows his way around material and is very literary (probably the most literary of all major screenwriters). In one of my other posts, I mentioned that the story is about a man who has to live even though his condition is absurd. Today I read an interview with Roth in which he said that, yes, Benjamin ages backwards but life is still rather the same.
Fitzgerald’s themes were life, death, melancholy, finding your place in the world, etc. It seems to me that Roth has maintained these themes from reading interviews with Fincher, Pitt and Roth himself.
]]>I just read the story and did a comparison here. I had to delve into plot points to compare the two so don’t read it if you don’t want to know too much. My conclusion was the movie bears very little resemblance to the story so it should be judged on its own merits.
]]>I think that was implicit in my responses. So, I agree.
“Viewers bring different life experiences to a film so there’s no way a filmmaker can please everyone.”
I totally agree! However, I think that criticism written before a film’s release tends to color one’s reading of the film before they even have a chance to see it. So the critic has to be careful. Some people will go in concentrating on what you say (I’m a music critic myself, and I probably turn people away from music they otherwise would have liked). But, what I’m simply suggesting is that conventional narrative expectations should take a backseat knowing what I know of the story. But, in itself, is an opinion colored by my own point-of-view.
SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK was magnificent cinema in my opinion, and it was precisely BECAUSE it functions well as an absurdist/surrealist film. It doesn’t observe traditional rules of cinema (although I do love films that are more traditional, too). I daresay BUTTON as a story is slightly surreal. It is unflinchingly absurd and almost a precursor in a way to magical realism.
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