The technique David Fincher calls the “cheapest trick in cinema”
Ignoring his feature-length directorial debut on Alien 3 because that’s what the man himself does, the filmography of David Fincher from that point on was reflective of an auteur who maintains control over every aspect of their latest work.
Whether it’s the noir-soaked murder mystery of Seven, the twist-heavy stylings of The Game, the anarchy of Fight Club, the nail-biting tension of Panic Room, or the true-life investigation of Zodiac, Fincher’s films quickly gained a reputation for being painstakingly researched, meticulously crafted, and captured with the clean precision of somebody who knew exactly what they wanted.
All of those aforementioned titles were thrillers in one way or another, and there’s only so long Fincher could have remained working in such loosely-connected circumstances before deciding he wanted to try something different. When he did, the end result was by far the most ambitious swing of his career to date.
Carrying an estimated budget of around $150million and requiring extensive visual effects work, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was unlike anything Fincher had ever made before. A fantastical drama chronicling the life and times of Brad Pitt’s title character, he’s born in the body of an old man before ageing backwards, with the story tracing him right through to his death as an oxymoronic 84-year-old infant.
The catalyst for the fable is Elias Koteas’ Monsieur Gateau, who constructed a clock that ran backwards as a memorial to those – like him – who lost their sons in battle during World War I. To illustrate how he wanted his creation to work in order to save his boy, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button plays its wartime footage backwards as Gateau laments how he wished his son would return to life.
In an interview with Film Comment, it may have sounded as though Fincher was being critical of reverse-chronological sequences in cinema, but he prefaced it by saying how “the people who posit these ideas are lunatics,” with screenwriter Eric Roth being singled out.
“Elias and I talked a lot about Mr. Gateau and his sort of tilting at windmills. But I think it’s kind of like what Spielberg’s great at with visual effects. He posits the idea before he shows it to you and he has you rooting for it,” he said before sharing his first reaction to the scene in question. “When I read it on the page I thought, is this going to work? A military charge running in reverse and seeing these people fly back together again? It’s the cheapest trick in cinema. It’s so simple and yet it’s a bold idea.”
He may have been on the fence at first, but Fincher was won over because “you have empathy for a situation and then he makes crystal clear his hopes and desires in this very simple cinematic conceit.” It was the cheapest cinematic trick in the book in his eyes, but The Curious Case of Benjamin Button nonetheless integrated it seamlessly into the story without a shred of gimmickry.
