Jim Emerson, writing on the Chicago Sun Times’ blogs, takes apart the notion that the digital process is what makes Benjamin Button “cold,” as has been asserted by a few critics:
And you might very well consider the Kubrickian sensibility of the director, David Fincher (“Se7en,” “Fight Club,” “Zodiac”), the most deliberate and precise of filmmakers. Not known as Mr. Warm ‘n’ Cozy — even when working from a Gumpian screenplay by the writer of “Forrest Gump.” If the film is dark and cool in tone, it’s not because Fincher chose digital technology. It’s because Fincher chose to make it dark and cool. You may dislike the countless ways in which the movie emphasizes these qualities (in every composition, every cut, every performance), but don’t pretend it’s the video that’s doing it.
More after the cut.
Emerson goes on to quote Marshall McLuhan (“I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here.”)
When Marshall McLuhan wrote in “Understanding Media” of movies as a “hot” medium and television as a “cool” medium, he wasn’t talking about emotional temperature-metaphors:
There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in “high definition.” High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, “high definition.” A cartoon is “low definition,” simply because very little visual information is provided. Telephone is a cool medium, or one of low definition, because the ear is given a meager amount of information. And speech is a cool medium of low definition, because so little is given and so much has to be filled in by the listener. On the other hand, hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience. Naturally, therefore, a hot medium like radio has very different effects on the user from a cool medium like the telephone.The resolution of current the high-definition digital video technology used in a film like “Benjamin Button” makes these distinctions between traditional 35mm films and “video” immaterial. The frame rate is the same, and in the case of feature films, most are still transferred to 35mm for distribution and exhibition. Directors, cinematographers, lab technicians can get just about any “look” — warm or cold — that they want. Filmmakers like Fincher or Michael Mann like to use digital video for shooting in the dark because its sensitivity to low light is more detailed, and more akin to what the human eye sees, than even the highest-speed motion picture film. They switch between film and video according to their needs, and Fincher used both on “Benjamin Button.”
In terms of technology, it’s time everyone took a giant step forward. Benjamin Button is one of the best films of the year and it got that way because its director was up to the task of taking film to a new level.