When directors choose to adapt a novel or short story to fit the silverscreen, they often face the arduous task of keeping the author’s original plot in tow as well as, putting forth a believable product. In the case of Scotts Fitzgerald’s short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, director, David Fincher and screenwriter, Eric Roth chose to scrap the original framework of the story and start anew. Although Fincher and Roth keeps the basic idea of Benjamin Button’s existence the same, their screen adaption tells a more sincere version of how it would feel to live life in reverse. However, both the director and screenwriter acknowledge that Benjamin’s tale cannot be told without giving the audience an explanation for why he is born in his unlikely condition. Therefore, the addition of the story of Monsieur Gateau’s backwards clock not only serves as an explanation for Benjamin’s existence and a visual metaphor for time going backwards, but it also helps to create a tone shift within Roth and Fincher’s movie that allows for viewers to feel compassion for Benjamin’s character.
The audience is introduced to the story of the backwards clock in passing by an ageing Daisy who is shown as she lies dying in a New Orleans hospital bed during the onset of Hurricane Katrina. Unlike the image that Fitzgerald painted for Hildegarde’s elderly years, Roth and Fincher choose to portray Daisy in a naturally decrepitating way as opposed to being healthy and living abroad. Therefore, they show Daisy reaching old age in a more contrite manner, painting her as frail and barely lucid. During this scene of the movie, Daisy offers the audience a precursor to Benjamin’s story. This is the story of Monsieur Gateau, a blind French man whose son goe...
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...ty to display a moving tale of human life. Their work attest to the fact that regardless of the circumstance of one’s birth, death is inevitable and life must be lived accordingly. Even though The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a work of extreme fiction, both Fitzgerald and Fincher display a raw tale of human emotion throughout life. However, the movie’s adaptation uses the backwards clock to establish a certain level of decorum around the story of Benjamin Button in a tasteful and appealing manner making his story more believable to the audience.
Work Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." The Curious Case of Benjamin Button & Other Jazz Age Stories. New York: Scribner, 1922. 318-42. Print.
Work Consulted
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Brad Pitt & Cate Blanchett. Paramount Pictures, 2008. DVD.
Daisy back. The past is represented by the clock and how Gatsby wants to repeat it with
Bad choices are made every day by everybody. Those bad choices could lead to consequences that are going to bother a person for a long time. Even more, that person may try various ways to correct that error. The intention is good, but things can go even worse if the effort is based on unrealistic fantasies. This effort is presented as a part of modernist ideas. Modernist writers dramatize this effort through the tragic outcomes of the characters. Three modernist pieces, A Street Car Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, The Great Gatsby, all of them sent out a message to the audience, the loss of past and how it cannot be recovered. Each piece features a character who lost hope, strived to recover the hope, and ended with a tragic outcome. A Street Car Named Desire featured Blanche; Blanche spent her whole life trying to get some attentions. Death of a Salesman featured Willy; Willy spent his whole life trying to apply the idea “Be Well Liked.” The Great Gatsby featured Jay Gatsby; Gatsby spent his whole life trying to win back Daisy. All of those characters ended with tragic outcome. Blanche was sent to asylum by her own sister. Willy committed suicide after felt humiliated by his sons. Gatsby was murdered with a gunshot planned by Tom Buchanan. Blanche, Willy, and Gatsby’s tragic fates are caused by their false beliefs about life, which are proven wrong by the contradictions between the reality and the illusion.
Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
Like a clock or a Rube Goldberg device, the plot of The Great Gatsby, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a specimen of fine machinery. If at any moment a piece fails, the structure of the entire story will cease to function as intended. If Gatsby had not stumbled upon the excursions of Dan Cody, if Gatsby had sent his letter to Daisy a few months sooner, if Gatsby had passed the house of Myrtle Wilson a moment earlier: all of these scenarios constitute a much different telling of the life of James Gatz. Every event falls perfectly into place to give the reader a coincidental but telling story of wealth and its corruptions. Nonetheless, as a broken clock can still be used as decoration, these alternate realities can still hold a powerful message as well. For example, had he not enlisted in the military, Gatsby’s life would be a drastically different tale involving rejection, defeat and acceptance.
Whenever books are adapted for film, changes inevitably have to be made. The medium of film offers several advantages and disadvantages over the book: it is not as adept at exploring the inner workings of people - it cannot explore their minds so easily; however, the added visual and audio capabilities of film open whole new areas of the imagination which, in the hands of a competent writer-director, can more than compensate.
As the case with most “Novel to Movie” adaptations, screenwriters for films will make minor, and sometimes drastic, adjustments to the original text in order to increase drama and to reach modern audiences. Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film interpretation of The Great Gatsby followed the 1925 classic great plot quite accurately, with minor deviations. However, Luhrmann made some notable differences to the characters and settings of The Great Gatsby in order for the story to relate to the current generation and to intensity the plot
Works Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925. Print. The.
American Beauty. Dir. Alan Ball. Perf. Kevin Spacey, Annette bening, and Thora Birch. DreamWorks SKG and Jinks/Cohen Company, 1999. DVD.
with people whom Fitzgerald sees as the cause of the downfall of society. Daisy shows a
For this assignment I have chosen to analyze a scene from the 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums, directed by West Anderson, where Richie Tenembaum, portrayed by Luke Wilson, attempts to commit suicide. This scene provides a shift from the previously established editing style of the film, its mood, pace, and camera movement as the filmmaker presents the climax in this one character’s story. This is done through the use of a specific mise en scène and an editing style which conveys the emotion behind the character’s actions.
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925
Salinger used the symbolism of a watch to connect the old and the young and the broken and the fixed. He shows us the effects a single wristwatch can have on a person’s emotions as well as the connections humans can make through a single item or one common interest, the letters. Salinger highlights the father daughter relationship compared to a stranger stranger relationship. He shows that a father’s love, even if its just a memory, can help a daughter though hard times. A stranger, the solider, can be effected by a young, naïve girl, Esmé, who has had had a rough life yet overcome her hardships through the compassion of others. Through love, she has shown a wounded Sergeant X, the “chance of again becoming a man with all his fac - with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact” (Salinger
In writing this book, commonly refered to as the “Great American Novel”, F. Scott Fitzgerald achieved in showing future generations what the early twenties were like, and the kinds of people that lived then. He did this in a beautifully written novel with in-depth characters, a captivating plot, and a wonderful sense of the time period.
“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine, some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything’s okay. I don’t make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything’s not okay.” - David Fincher. David Fincher is the director that I am choosing to homage for a number of reasons. I personally find his movies to be some of the deepest, most well made, and beautiful films in recent memory. However it is Fincher’s take on story telling and filmmaking in general that causes me to admire his films so much. This quote exemplifies that, and is something that I whole-heartedly agree with. I am and have always been extremely opinionated and open about my views on the world and I believe that artists have a responsibility to do what they can with their art to help improve the culture that they are helping to create. In this paper I will try to outline exactly how Fincher creates the masterpieces that he does and what I can take from that and apply to my films.