Andrew McMurtryREVIEW: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
January 6th 2009 13:19
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is the new film starring Brad Pitt, as a person who is born as an 80 year old man and gets younger while everyone else gets older. It is an interesting film with an interesting premise and is definitely well done. There are some funny parts and romance in this adapted drama. As the movie goes on you see how hard it would be to age backwards in regards to living a normal life especially when you look at family relationships, friendships and love as well as being accepted by society.
The story follows the idea of a man being born an 80 year-old and growing younger throughout his life. It’s a fairly simple yet unique idea. It shows late 19th and early 20th century ideals. The story really focuses around the love story between Daisy (Cate Blanchett) and Benjamin (Brad Pitt). It is really done well. Daisy doesn’t really know about Benjamin’s affliction until she sees him closer to her age. As a young girl, she sees him as a strange old man who appears similar in age to her but looks much older. By the time she is in her early twenties and is working as a ballet dancer in New York, she is shocked to see Benjamin looking much younger. This is where the realisation begins to occur. The interesting thing about the film is that the only time they are together and function as a couple is when the ages and looks are the same. But the love is still held by at least one of them at all times. Earlier on, Benjamin appears to love Daisy, who doesn’t know how to express love in any other form except with physicality, especially when she is in her early twenties, while later on, after their love affair, Daisy holds the flicker of love for Benjamin through his senility as a young looking child. Like all great romances though, it is fated to fail.
When I saw the movie, I thought that it was really good, but I didn’t like that it jumped about 10 years at a time. Later on I learned that it was based on some of the collected works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and it made more sense to me that they filmed it like this. I still thought it would be better if they just ran through the years with less of a jump between the ages. It would make the makeup of the aging more subtle. But really the story centred around Benjamin and Daisy’s relationship, although it does look at the other people in his life who helped him grow up while he was growing younger like Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) and Captain Mike (Jared Harris). It gave me a similar message to Forrest Gump in the way that by the end it’s more like a message of even though you’re different doesn’t mean you can’t be special.
While “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is very technically great, the director David Fincher has really worked well to show the very best of the settings, mostly of New Orleans and 1940’s/50’s New York as well as the main characters in Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt’s character is especially interesting as the main character as his age is like a mask which hides his innocence in the beginning, and his youth hides his experience in the end. Sections of his life and experiences in his life really shape him as a man. His first real love, a British lady, Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton), who begins an affair with Benjamin after some seemingly innocent flirting, leaves without saying goodbye and he never hears from her again. He fights in World War 2 on the tug boat he mans with Captain Mike and many of his friends are killed. Despite things like this as well as meeting his rich father informally and then as his father just before he died, Benjamin still loves Queenie whole-heartedly as his mother and doesn’t even question it. His family is obviously very important and this is shown with his eventual relationship with Daisy.
One of the cleverest things of the film is the subtext of Hurricane Katrina and the possible evacuation of the hospital where the elderly Daisy is being treated. I love how they tell the story of Benjamin through the eyes of Daisy’s daughter as several revelations are revealed through his diary. The film is fantastic and a great story to be lost in. There were some slightly, how should I say, very wrong moments, for example, the early relationship between Daisy and Benjamin which appears to be very paedophilic and Benjamin visiting a prostitute when because he told the Captain he had never “had” a woman. At that time, I think he would’ve been about 12 ish. I found some elements of the film a bit strange and creepy, but it really is a great film. It is a brilliant and very enjoyable two-and-a-half hour film which will have you interested the whole time. I’d give the movie 4 out of 5.
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