(click to enlarge)
After the tantalizing tease last week showing us a snapshot of the backwards-printed posters for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, we now have this more gorgeous twosome for viewing in huge resolution. The high key lighting and total lack of back-lit illumination reminds me of the stark full-frontal photos of Richard Avedon. (You’d damn well better bring your inner glamor when you sit for a bare-bulb Avedon interrogation portrait.) The posters thankfully forgo sepia for the more gilded glow of a burnished coin — the golden ageless image of bas-relief royal medallions. Another striking thing these faces have in common with an Avedon power portrait is the intensity of their arresting gazes. The camera captures an unblinking confrontational challenge, yet hint at the warm promise of frank engagement — tentative lips on the very verge of expressing what’s going on in the mind behind the eyes. The title written in reverse on Brad Pitt’s page now makes deeper conceptual sense when paired with its reflective mirror image on Cate Blanchetts half of the duo. The dyptich is combined in a more typical but no less effective fusion after the cut.
