The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of those movies I had absolutely no interest in seeing until it was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. So when it came to our $1 theater, I took the opportunity and sacrificed almost 3 hours of my life to sit through David Fincher’s attempt at being dramatic without having hallucinating dorks beating each other up.
The movie goes Titanic on us in that the whole story is essentially a flashback; an elderly woman, Daisy, lies dying in a New Orleans hospital while her daughter reads from the diary of Benjamin Button, which recounts most of his life. I didn’t really care for this, and feels like an attempt to add emotional depth and symbolism in a movie that makes its symbolism far too obvious to really be counted as symbolism any more (I just used 'symbolism' 3 times in once sentence). For example, the whole thing starts out with a blind clockmaker’s giant clock being put into storage, only to be revealed once more at the end of the movie. Who cares? It’s one of those things that retracts from the story and feels like a cheap shot at giving his movie more emotion, and Fincher does this once more later in the film in a truly annoying fashion I’ll discuss later.
Benjamin, as it turns out and as you probably know already unless you live in like North Korea, was born an old man and is aging backwards, becoming physically younger as the years progress. What’s interesting, though, is that you never real feel that way. The trailers made the film seem like a whimsical journey in the spirit of vintage fantasies, but this I assure you it’s not. This is an autobiography, an epic life story, and the whole aging backwards thing really feels more like a side not than the premise of the movie.
From here on out, we’re pushed through Benjamin’s life. At age 12, when he has the body of a 70-year-old, he falls in love with Daisy, a little girl he meets at a gathering. This also fails, because the love between Daisy and Benjamin never feels genuine. It feels like two actors pretending to like each other, and their entire relationship seems to be based off of sex. I swear Benjamin Button gets more action than Fitty-Cent.
Okay, here’s the thing that you may find shocking considering I’ve spent the first 3 paragraphs of the review telling you all of Benjamin Button’s faults: it’s good. It’s strange, really, and somewhat disappointing, to see this happen. Despite its pitfalls, the things that don’t work like Benjamin and Daisy’s love and a hummingbird that’s supposed to symbolize death (very, very lazy of you, Mr. Fincher), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button still manages to be an enjoyable film.
Like I mentioned before, his aging backwards never really becomes too much of a nuisance until the end of the film, when the love between he and Daisy finally feels genuine, granted it’s in the final scene. It’s depressing when we watch an entire life from beginning to end, especially with this unique perspective put on it. Brad Pitt does an amazing job. He never goes over the top and by the end of the movie we truly do believe that maybe there really was a Benjamin Button. Though his interactions with Daisy early on are not particularly moving, the way he perceives life, the choices he makes, and even his final words in the film all feel very, very real.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button really isn’t the fantasy, sci-fi that I think most people thought it was given the trailer’s whimsical style. It’s bogged down by some excessive attempts at symbolism, and the chemistry between Benjamin and Daisy early on isn’t sold. But it’s never, ever boring. It’s a bio epic, a look at a very unique person’s life that doesn’t outstay its welcome and will make you wonder just how amazing of a film it might’ve been without its numerous failures.
Score: 8/10
