The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Review By unity768

Recurring collaborations between actors and directors usually expresses a sign of success. Dicaprio and Scorsese, Allen and Johansson, Damon and Greengrass, and finally Depp and Burton are all examples of modern day pairings in which have seen success critically, or in the box office. You can officially add Pitt/Fincher to the mix, and somewhere near the top because of their ingenious work behind the emotionally exhausting, fantasy age epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Both have shown what they can do outside their pairing, with Fincher's superbly crafted Zodiac and Pitt's wide variety of brilliant roles, ranging from the Edward Zwick epic Legends of the Fall to his most recent work in the Coen Bros. hilarious dark comedy Burn After Reading. Having previously worked together on Fight Club and Se7en, this dynamic pair has a three film win streak, and this might just be their best effort yet.

The story is told in the year 2005, with the haunting Hurricane Katrina just nearing its target in New Orleans. An old women named Daisy (Cate Blanchett), in the hospital with little time to live asks her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) to open up a journal in which she hasn't opened ever before. Caroline begins to read the story of Benjamin Button, a person who had been born under unusual circ*mstances. Anyone who's seen the trailer, or is in fact alive knows the epic tale of Benjamin Button, the person who ages backwards. He's born and abandoned to a young black women named Queenie, played warmly and solidly by Taraji P. Henson. The baby is the actual size of baby, but looks horrendous with wrinkles, etc. Queenie runs a house dedicated to the catering of the elderly, so this seemed like a perfect fit for Benjamin.

From crawling, to walking, to talking, and finally to moving out we see this odd character grow up right before our eyes. While he's staying at the elderly house he encounters a couple of interesting people. Some are funny, sad, and lonely individuals. By far the most interesting and significant character is that in Daisy, in who Benjamin befriends. Although he appears to be much much older than Daisy, who's the granddaughter of one of the elders in the catering house, they're really very close in their youth. While Benjamin and Daisy are the heart of the piece, they're only together for a brief period of time. While in his teens and twenties, Benjamin survives a WWII attack on his tugboat while Daisy pursues her dream of becoming a dancer.

The direction by Fincher is just incredibly strong, with dazzling visuals and brilliant camera work. While the script by Eric Roth is lacking when compared to Fincher's direction, it is solid nonetheless. Roth is most famous for writing the screenplay for Forrest Gump, a film I'm not overwhelmed by like the masses that voted it best picture of the year. Unlike Gump, Button is a much more interesting character. Having spent his early years in an old age home, he has seen death time and time again. Throughout most the picture Button seems content and just fine about his backward aging, and maybe his years with Queenie in the elderly home gave birth to that. He rarely ever crumbles under adversity, and even has confidence to engage in a tiny but special affair with Elizabeth Abbott, a women who's not so much in love with Benjamin but just his peculiar case of aging.

Moving at a gradual pace, the film really starts to peak when Benjamin and Daisy decide to live together in a small duplex. There relationship, while filled with love and romance is burdened when Daisy claims she's pregnant. This is the first telling signs of fatigue by Button, and while he remains in love with Daisy, he knows his daughter is going to need a father, not a playmate. The agonizing pain of nothing lasts forever is brutally depicted throughout this segment of the film. Benjamin Button feels like a life themed film, and how luck, chance, and death are inevitably apart of everybody's days on earth. There are comedic segments between an elderly man and Benjamin in which entail the man claiming he'd been hit by lighting on numerous accounts. The symbolic representation of the clock, or it's round shape in comparison to his biological father's business of buttons all echo back to the films themes and motifs. Furthermore, This is a film focused on an unreal, but fascinating character and not an ordinary character living an unreal life. Maybe this is why I enjoyed this epic so much. My taste in films is not so much in plot, but in characters. Character driven films has always been my sweet tooth in film watching. Last years There Will Be Blood and Into the Wild set their places on my top ten list because they're character studies on fascinating individuals.

There's a lot more going on here than what I have stated in this review. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a near three hour film, and perhaps this puts a tiny wrinkle in what is an exceptional fantastical romance epic. It's not as engaging as Fincher's crime drama Zodiac, but to compare every film he does with the latter seems unfair and unreal. Whether it's the complex characters, the fantastical journey, the themes on life and death, the moving music, or the top notch performances by Pitt and Blanchett, it's almost impossible not to enjoy The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.