Life Understood Backwards

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2008. Dir. David Fincher. 2 hours 47 minutes.

Saw Benjamin Button on Boxing Day. Had a diet Coke.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the story of man (played by Brad Pitt) who is born as an old man, and goes through his life aging backwards, becoming more youthful as everyone else around him gets older. The film takes its name, premise, and protagonist's name from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but nothing else.

The film will probably remind many of Forrest Gump, and with good reason, as they both had the same screenwriter. Benjamin Button, I would argue, has a bit more depth to it. While Gump seemed to revolve around the theme of chance and fate, Button is more directly about life and how we travel through it. Although I am only 27, I think I can safely gauge that I will be happy to trade my youth for wisdom, an oppurtunity that Button does not seem to get. Forrest Gump traveled through life as an idiot, essentially; Ben Button, while growing younger, develops what I would describe as a vapidity. This is not a flaw of Brad Pitt's performance, but actually a strength, since I feel that loss of accumulated wisdom is the point of the story.

Cate Blanchett does a strong job as Button lifelong love, Daisy, especially in the framing scenes at her deathbed, where she recounts the tale to her daughter, played by Julia Ormond, who I would love to see make a comeback into mainstream films (or any films at all) since she seemed to disappear in the late 90's. There's been awards talk for Taraji Henson, who plays Button's adopted mother, but I can't say that her performance did much for me.

Overall, I liked Benjamin Button quite a bit, and it really made me ponder my own life, which is all you can ask of any film.

5 stars out of 5