Across his filmography David Fincher’s work has been noted as dark,
foreboding, chilly, cynical, cuttingm Curious Case of Benjamin
Button is a striking anomaly in his filmography as the allure ofthe project makes some
sense, but the execution is a lush, unabashed romance bubbling with maWkiSh
sentiment. The movie is graceful, beautiful, poetic, and yet oddly distant. The whole
production feels gilded as Fincher made a deeply moving film out of a fairly terrible
Script. The most curious thing about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is how it
manages to be a tearjerker despite its craven desire to elicit emotion from a director who
rejects sentimentality.
In an interview in David Prior‘s excellent The Curious Birth of Benjamin ‘
Button documentary, Fincher says he was attracted to the project because he wanted to
make a movie about death since his father had recently died. He explains that being at
his father’s deathbed was so much more profound than having a child. “You want it to be
over as quickly as possible,” says Fincher, “and yet you don’t want it to be over.” This
led to him wanting to tell a story about “Love measured against this graph paper of
something we try so desperately to ignore.”