emotionally touching, delicate, supported by outstanding female performances

Rating: 7/10 (13 April 2009)

Really curious is the case of Benjamin Button, a movie that, besides being, of course, improbable and really strange and besides the extraordinary effectiveness in rendering the passing of time on the faces and bodies of the characters, is able to offer many significant and by no way banal stimuli of thought. The most interesting one is the choice to leave history in the background, focusing attention on the "small" histories of the protagonists, who do not seem to be affected by what happens outside their lives. The impression we get is that "great history" is always there, doing its inexorable course, but that our personal story has a force and a value of its own, able to overcome the greatest events. Wars as well as Katrina will bring death and destruction, but our story will remain our greatest and most powerful bulwark of self-defence, something which nothing and nobody will be able to erase. Within the long (but never boring) time run the curious life of Benjamin is displayed with delicacy, arousing feelings of tenderness and authenticity, as to underline the complexity of human life, along a line where TIME is the essential point, always there to remind us of the shortness of life and the necessity to catch the moment, being however this universal warning never stressful or annoying. Female performances are really outstanding: Kate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, Tilda Swinton prove to be three great prodigies of acting and hit the mark in an impressive way. Less convincing is Brad Pitt, sometimes victim of his own timeless handsomeness, and appearing entrapped in a sort of monotonous face mime. A movie that gets to engage the audience, just by touching some very sensitive chords of the human soul.