The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

(2008)

Directed by

David Fincher

Review by Zach Saltz

The most affecting stories tend to often be the most unusual and offbeat ones, and David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is no exception.  This is a movie that seems boundless in its imagination and pure ingenuity, and what makes it all the more remarkable is how the characters onscreen and the viewers watching them are merely content to accept at face value the strange and unusual circumstances surrounding the story seemingly without question.  In crafting a tale of a man who ages backwards – that is, being born with the body of a decrepit old man and dying in the body of an infant – Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) have taken the novelty and incredulity out of this bizarre circumstance and opted instead to focus on the rich emotional aspect of the story – a love saga that builds to a climax midway through the story, and ends with its sad, invariable conclusion of separation and withdrawal.

The story is told from the deathbed of Daisy (played with much makeup by Cate Blanchett) who recounts to her grown daughter (Julia Ormond) the story of Benjamin, a man-child who continued to love her even as she aged and he “grew” younger.  Benjamin is played by Brad Pitt, and even if the actor playing the “older” Benjamin does not physically resemble Pitt, we are always somehow aware that Pitt’s persona is embedded in the in the heart of the lovably older character.

The first hour and a half or so of Benjamin Button is proficient, if not unremarkable filmmaking.  Many of the scenes and settings seem borrowed directly from Forrest Gump (the unorthodox protagonist cast out by his society, the jarring chronology and glib narration – hell, Benjamin even works on a tug boat!)  Benjamin and Daisy’s relationship seems underdeveloped as a result of Fincher devoting surprisingly sparse time to scenes with the two together (nor is it aided by an extended, nonetheless impressive, sequence where Benjamin is seduced by a sexy officer’s wife stationed in Murmansk, played by Tilda Swinton).  The major plot points along Benjamin’s life are predictable, but told in a manner that leaves the viewer more engaged than isolated – perhaps because the material is familiar and rather universal.

But then, something strange happens: Once the film moves away from the impressive CGI effects of Brad Pitt’s aged body and Benjamin and Daisy “meet in the middle,” Benjamin Button suddenly thrusts itself into one of the most compelling, utterly original, and completely heartbreaking love stories of recent years.  Yes, there is a strange sort of perversion to the thought of an elderly woman holding in her arms the man who she has longed for and lusted after for decades.  Yes, there is something almost ridiculous about the notion that a five-year-old could be suffering through the painful symptoms of senility and Alzheimer’s.  But like all great romantic tragedies, the two know their relationship is doomed and yet, even through the most thankless of circumstances, they somehow continue to love each other, even when a conventional “love” cannot possibly exist between them.  The final scenes of the film, told with a surprising sense of urgency (and featuring one of the year’s most impressive scores, by Alexandre Desplat), are undeniably heartbreaking, partially because of the pure absurdity of the situation, partly because the universal pain of losing a loved one as presented by Fincher as the final cathartic art of a lifelong love story with an unfulfilled conclusion.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was overall a very pleasant surprise; expecting little more than an overwrought, all-star Tim Burton-esque, I came out of the movie impressed that the story was able to sustain itself and remain compelling for its bulky running time.  Pitt is very good here, and even an over-wrinkled Blanchett is superb by the end of the film, when it becomes painfully clear that her heart is breaking in wake of the invariable enemy of time.  While the first two-thirds of the film are slightly more than mediocre, the film’s final portion transcends its earlier material and turns the story into something truly magical and heartbreaking.

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