The other day I startled out of my doze and discovered I was in the car with my wife, The Duchess.
ME: Wha? Where are we going?
D: The movies. Be quiet.
I fell back into a fitful doze and dreamed of robotic tumblers that fill themselves with whiskey. When I awoke again, I had been gently laid into a seat in the theater, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was just beginning. The Duchess goes on a movie tear around this time every year, because all of the award nominations are out and she wants to see all the nominated movies, even if they are movies she would normally back away from in fear. Naturally, I come along, like luggage.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (TCCBB) is a pretty good movie; I’ll even admit to being a little choked up by it, as it is profoundly sad – or at least was to me. I wouldn’t put it in any Top-10 Lists, because I think it’s approximately two centuries too long, but what works in the movie works extremely well, and I am a big fan of David Fincher so it gets a pass on the fact that I missed the best years of my life sitting through its middle arc.
So, TCCBB is pretty good. The real question is, is it Science Fiction? I’m not aware of any festering controversy over this question, it’s just something that occurred to me. On the one hand, the main character is born a tiny old man and ages backwards physically, and forwards mentally. That sure ain’t natural, and while no scientific explanation is ever offered for this, it many generally defined senses of the term, that makes the story SF/F.
On the other hand, nothing that happens in the movie – at all – depends on the curious case of its protagonist. You could have re-written this film with Benjamin Button born a sickly, disfigured child who slowly grows healthier and more traditionally handsome as he ages and almost nothing about the story, save a single decision near the end, would need to be changed. Roughly 95% of the story would be exactly the same.
This is because nothing is really done with the incredible idea of a man aging backwards. Now, he’s not aging backwards in a time-travel sense, aware of the future; he’s only physically aging backwards. But still, nothing is done with this idea, really: Aside from some jokes, Benjamin’s life proceeds along a pretty natural path that is almost totally unaffected – outwardly – by his condition.
So much could have been done, of course. A young child in a wizened old man’s body. A 75-year-old man filled with experience and knowledge in a teenager’s body. The experience of going senile as a 10-year-old (admittedly touched on – lightly – in the film). There were light efforts at some of this, but not much, and you really could remove the “gimmick” and still have the same film, the same themes, the same feel, and practically the same dialogue.
If the SF concept at the core of a story doesn’t actually make much difference, is it SF? And does it matter?
It’s an interesting question. If you get extreme and loose with the rules, you could probably retell a lot of SF/F as mainstream fiction, removing all weirdness, future science and whatnot – some stories more than others. But I don’t think it’s an unreasonable requirement that in SF/F stories the SF/F concept has to be central to the story – in other words, it has to affect the characters and world around them to such an extent that removing it would destroy the story.
Then again, I drink. TCCBB is a damn fine movie, so this is not meant as an attack on it, just a rumination. In the end, I firmly believe questions like this one are much less important than the overall success of a story, so I don’t hold anything against TCCBB at all. Although I’ll probably not watch it again until I have a few years to spare.