The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Taraji P. Henson

Directed by David Fincher

Director David Fincher, the auteur filmmaker behind the contemporary masterpieces Zodiac and Seven, is due for attention at this year’s Academy Awards on February 22^nd. His latest film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, is a transformative experience – a tragic lament on the inevitability of losing love, and the understanding of time as experienced backward.

Daisy (Cate Blanchett) lies dying in a hospital in New Orleans, as Hurricane Katrina sweeps away her hometown, leaving only the memories of her lifelong romance with Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt). Her daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond), sits at her bedside, reading Benjamin’s diary to Daisy as the storm brews outside.

Benjamin was born under peculiar circumstances – as World War I comes to a close in 1918, Benjamin is born as a wrinkled, elderly man in his late eighties, much to the disgust of his father, Thomas Button (Jason Flemyng). His father abandons him, leaving Benjamin on the doorstep of Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) and Tizzy (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), an African-American couple running a retirement facility in New Orleans, who embrace Benjamin and raise him as their own son.

Progressively aging backwards, Benjamin spends his early years in a wheelchair, enjoying the company of other elderly folks who reside in Queenie’s home. After learning to walk and function in everyday society, Benjamin befriends young Daisy, and the two forge a friendship that defies physical appearances. “You’re odd,” young Daisy tells Benjamin, and that he is. That their young love endures is endearing, given Benjamin’s curious aging process.

The trials that ensue in the life of Benjamin Button – including his affair with an older married woman (Tilda Swinton), his experiences working on a fishing boat caught in World War II submarine warfare, and his reconciliation with his father – are quite similar to many elements in Forrest Gump (1994). Screenwriter Eric Roth wrote both movies, although unlike Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is never bogged down by unnecessary sentimentality, and we can most likely thank Fincher for that.

The heart and soul of Benjamin Button, however, is the relationship between Benjamin and Daisy. Benjamin’s emotional maturity peaks at the same time as his physical beauty, and when he and Daisy ‘meet in the middle’ – when they have both aged around forty-five years – they can only grow further and further apart from thereon. The tragic nature of their relationship defines Fincher’s movie, leading to an elderly Daisy taking care of a young, infant Benjamin suffering from dementia.

Although the subject matter is strangely magical for David Fincher, his directorial bleakness still enshrouds the movie – after all, this is a story about dwindling youth and the harsh nature of time. His visual potency is alive in Benjamin Button, which is extraordinary in scope and imagery. As Benjamin Button, Pitt gives a hauntingly understated performance, and supporting players Blanchett and Henson are no less than incredible.

Although I haven't read the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story on which The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based, the parallels between Daisy in Benjamin Button and Daisy in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby are striking. Both works are stories of fading youth and doomed relationships that cannot possibly endure, and in that respect, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a great companion piece to Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. David Fincher’s masterful film is a beautifully bleak examination of love and time.

                                                                                            
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