A review of David Fincher's the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchet, and Julia Ormond...
If a clock can tick backwards, can a person live his life in reverse? And if he did, would it really matter? Would it make a difference? These are not easy questions, certainly not for Benjamin Button.
Mark Twain once remarked that the best part of our life comes at the beginning, and the worst part is usually at the end. To put his musings to the test, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the short story of Benjamin Button upon which this intriguing film is loosely based. Other than the premise of a geriatric baby growing physically younger by the day, however nothing about this incredible journey mirrors Fitzgerald’s horribly depressing tale of a man unable to reconcile his plight with the natural circle of life.
Baby Benjamin (Brad Pitt or, at this point, a CGI rendering) is born at Baltimore hospital, looking – much to his father’s horror – like a human monster. In frenzy, Mr. Button grabs the screaming gremlin and dumps him on a doorstep. The whole event is a calamity Mr. Button regrets for life, but his actions put Benjamin on the ideal starting square of his journey – a residential home. Surrounded by mortality from birth, death doesn’t faze Benjamin who wheels himself around the home, learning to play the piano, and playing with little Daisy who regularly visits her Grandma. In the way that only children do, Daisy sees past the wrinkles and cataracts to the child in Benjamin and has no qualms about waking him in the small hours to play. “You wanna see something?” she whispers. “Sure!” replies an arthritic Benjamin clambering out of bed unquestioningly.
As Benjamin’s life unwinds, we witness a lot of firsts. His first kiss, first visit to a brothel, first love and his first time drinking, whereupon his momma catches him and watches, hands on hips, as the 70-year-old Pitt projectile vomits over the stairs. But almost every chapter brings us back to Daisy (played in adulthood by Cate Blanchett). Throughout the tales of Benjamin’s life, we’re continually sucked out of the reverie and plunked back to the present day – a bleak hospital room where Daisy lies on her deathbed as her daughter reads from Benjamin’s diary. There’s something lazy about this easy narration, and Blanchett’s barely decipherable croaking is extremely irritating – probably because throughout the rest of the film she’s utterly enchanting, radiating a strength, candor and severe beauty that only befit Blanchett.
And, yet the most striking element of it all is the hero himself. Benjamin is a blank page onto whom a story is written. However – this is the strangest element of all – Benjamin elicits little empathy, largely because he drifts emotionless through each chapter of his life. Sure, we feel bad that he’s a cruelly abandoned baby and it’s impossible not to feel that patronizing warmth towards the elderly, but he has no emotional barometer. Devoid of outbursts, tears, stomach-clutching laughter or rage, we only know Benjamin feels anything when he says so in his diary. And yet somehow Pitt’s performance is flawless.
It takes time to let this film settle, and even longer to digest, let alone to give way to a belch of satisfaction.
The one sequence that embodies the essence of the story comes as a montage of seemingly unrelated events, characters and hiccups that cause a domino effect leading to one tragic moment. Had we not forgotten those keys, missed that bus, or stopped at the red light, could we have changed events?
The answer is no. Everything that happens is sewn into life’s tapestry. We can choose to frown at the knots, the snipped threads and the tangles, or turn it over and gaze at the beautiful pattern they’ve helped to create. Impossible to pin down, categorize or even judge, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button shows that whether we live life forwards or backwards, the outside is just a shell and it’s what we choose to do with life that sifts out the best parts from the worst.
