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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful, Poignant and Long, 22 April 2009
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Director David Fincher and co-writers Eric Roth and Robin Swicord might well have followed Mr. Fitzgerald's lead and made their movie shorter, because the film's running time is nearly 3 hours. And that is really a long time to expect an audience to sit still...at least for this particular film, with its straightforward premise: A child is born as a very old man. The story progresses and the man progresses to lose a year every year. He grows younger with time. That's the magic which makes this enchanting tale unique...and, well, magical. (but still too long!!)
Initially, a blind man is commissioned to create a clock to hang in New Orleans' train station. Embittered by news of his son's death in WWI, and by all deaths in all wars, he creates a clock which runs backwards, so that the young lives lost might be restored.
Meanwhile, Daisy, an elderly women, (Kate Blanchett, made-up to look old and ugly...is this possible?), is on her deathbed in a New Orleans' hospital. As Hurricane Katrina rages outside her window, she asks her daughter, (Julia Ormond), to read from a secret diary. Through her diary, the dying woman tells the story of one Benjamin Button and how his life intersected with her's.
While a New Orleans' crowd celebrates the end of WWI, a young mother dies giving birth to a son. When the infant's father sees him for the first time, his misery at the loss of his wife is overshadowed by his horror as he glimpses his child. The baby boy looks like a monster. In fact, the tiny infant has the wizened face and body of a man in his late eighties. Mr. Button, the Dad, leaves his son on the steps of an old-age home where Queenie, (Taraji P. Hensen) and Tizzy (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), a couple who work at the home, take in the boy child and make him their own. They name him Benjamin.
Imagine their surprise when the aged baby begins to grow younger. Eventually, he is able to transport himself by wheelchair, then he walks with a cane, then upright with no assistance, until he is actually able to walk quickly on his own two feet. Remember the riddle, "What has 4 legs in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, and 3 in the evening?" Well, this is the riddle reversed. When Benjamin reaches his 70's, more or less, he meets a little girl named Daisy, whose grandmother lives at the home. The two immediately feel a sense of affinity and play happily together, in spite of the enormous difference in their ages. They are best friends, sharing secrets and listening as Daisy's grandmother reads to them.
While Benjamin's age decreases, his adventures increase. And Daisy grows older. Benjamin goes to sea and Daisy becomes a successful ballerina. They meet in New York, but Benjamin is still too old for her, in a romantic sense. One feels a sense of poignancy and wistfulness as the now middle-aged man watches her go off with someone younger. I take out my tissues for the first time at this point, and don't put them away.
Eventually Benjamin and Daisy catch up to each other in time...but you must see the film to find out what happens as they fall in love, and then fall away from each other as they continue to age on dissimilar paths.
I think this film belongs to Daisy/Blanchette, rather than to charismatic Brad Pitt, who does turn out a compelling performance. Daisy is the one who truly has growing pains - who struggles with her lack of worldly experience and develops as a character. Benjamin is born with the wisdom and tranquility that come with age and he appears somewhat detached as his life unfolds.
Although the make-up artistry and technical effects are exceptional, the storyline and the changing faces of the actors is what enthralls. The themes of the passage of time and of inevitable loss are quite moving and powerful.
So, I would suggest that you definitely see the film as, ultimately, it is well worth the disadvantage of its length. Once again, a matter of time.
Jana Perskie
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36 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, 30 Dec 2008
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button opens with a very elderly Cate Blanchett lying in a hospital bed just as she's about to die. She is with her daughter, Caroline (played by Julia Ormond - last seen with Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall), and an old leather diary written by the eponymous Benjamin Button, stuffed with tickets and postcards and clippings and scraps of paper.
As she starts to read, the film swiftly transports us to early 1900s New Orleans, and the film quality takes on a pastel-shaded, crackly appearance and it's unbelievably beautiful and evocative. We're given the genesis of the film, as a clock-maker creates a magnificent clock that ticks backwards, reversing time.
It's soon after that that Benjamin is born, and born old. He has arthritis and cataracts and paper-like skin. His father leaves him on the stairs of an old people's home, and Benjamin is taken in by a warm, wonderful Creole woman who raises him as her own. There he falls in forever-love with Daisy... and she with him, despite his appearing as an elderly man, and she a child.
The film chronicles Benjamin's life, as written in his diary. Pitt narrates, much like he does in Interview With The Vampire... and that's not the only similarity between the two. The slightly other-wordly feel of N'Orleans decades ago is rampant in both; the richness and texture of the film is there, too.
The love story between Daisy (Cate Blanchett) and Benjamin Button is bittersweet and powerful. It's disorientating, watching one age as the other grows younger - it becomes easy to forget that they have loved one another for almost 80 years, and only been together for a time in the middle. One brief exchange very much clarifies it when he is now in his 20s, and she in her 50s:
Daisy: "You're so young..."
Benjamin: "Only on the outside."
It's a love story and a tragedy and a fantasy, beautifully and subtly done, with a backdrop of cultural events in America's history. These, though, are used to show the passage of time and to date Benjamin's life - they're a painting in the background and he plays no part in them.
It's a peaceful, gentle film, and it ponders life as it goes along. It's thoroughly beautiful in every way.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Unrealised potential, 23 Jul 2009
This film could have been excellent.
It is well shot and well directed. The score is beautiful.
My problem is that the lead character is just a little too whimiscal. Through out the entire film there is no sense of developing maturity or wisdom, and the final decision smacks of cowardice.
Maybe I'm being too judgemental but I felt this could have been so much more, rather than the missed opportunity it has become.
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