Text Size:
A|
A|
A
Email
Print
Imagine, if you will, a pair of ladders, escalators or elevators, side by side.
Through a quirk of birth, Benjamin Button arrives at the top -- a sort of elderly baby -- and gets younger with each passing year. Daisy, on the other hand, takes the path trod by every other human on the planet by starting at the bottom as an infant and growing older with each birthday.
But they have a magical period where they meet in the middle and their love is at the center of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," a wondrous movie starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.
The idea comes from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, a mere 24 pages long and itself inspired by Mark Twain's rumination: "Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18."
But what happens when you're a boy in an old man's body or an old man in a boy's body and when the slide doesn't stop at 18? When your loved ones sprout wrinkles and age spots and you look like someone's son instead of their mate?
- Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji Henson
- Rating: PG-13 for brief war violence, sexual content, language and smoking
- Web site: BenjaminButton.com
David Fincher, who worked with Pitt on "Se7en" and "Fight Club," directs a screenplay by Eric Roth. He has spun the Fitzgerald story into a 167-minute movie that bears some similarities to "Forrest Gump," which won Roth an Academy Award for adapted screenplay.
Both films rely on seamless visual trickery, have likable leads and rich supporting characters who are witnesses to historic happenings and a love that cannot endure. Each also has a signature catchphrase, and here it's spoken by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), who becomes Benjamin's warm, wise mother and believes, "You never know what's coming for you."
The story opens in a hospital room where a young woman is keeping vigil with her ailing, elderly mother. A diary given to the older woman opens a portal to New Orleans at another time, the celebratory end of World War I. That's when an odd-looking baby is born and abandoned on the steps of a retirement home.
Queenie, who spends her days tending to the elderly and dying, takes one look at Benjamin and decides, "You are as ugly as an old pot but you still is a child of God." Once he grows a bit, he fits right in with the old folks; bald, bespectacled and in a wheelchair, he thinks he's in the twilight of his life.
But, as he tells his mother, "Some days I feel different than the day before."
Turns out he's getting younger and stronger with each year and, as they pass, Benjamin meets the girl of his dreams, takes a job on a tugboat with Captain Mike (Jared Harris), ends up in far-flung locations and reunites with Daisy (Blanchett), now a dancer.
Moving backward allows Benjamin to know, "Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss."
Add to that the knowledge that some things are transient, that timing is everything, that people can have lasting effects on you long after you've forgotten their names, that love knows no color, that regrets can be redressed, that loss and death are inevitable, that life should be savored and, "When it comes to the end, you have to let go."
One of the minor plot threads seems contrived but makeup and effects are first-rate. Pitt brings a courtly charm and heartstopping appeal to Benjamin at his prime while Blanchett makes Daisy as fiery as her red hair. They touch us with their wish for the impossible: to freeze time on the journey up the down staircase.
