Curiously I Loved Benjamin Buttons

Rating: 9/10 (5 December 2008)

Each and every day, we as humans face the cold hard fact that nothing lasts. We struggle to achieve various goals and joys in our lives, we want them to endure. The hard fact is deep down we know they wont. The film "THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON" is a true race against the clock. First I should say that this film is one of the most piercing, beautiful, and eccentric studio movies in recent memory, an exquisitely crafted film about memory, love, opportunity, and the passage of time. Set during the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, Daisy (Cate Blanchett) is about to die, she wants to tell her daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond) many things, she has been hiding them from her and she feels this will be her last opportunity. Daisy tells Caroline to read from a diary, when she does it is written in first person from the point of view of Benjamin Buttons. Benjamin was born on the day the great war ended, also Benjamin is a baby, but his body shows all the wear and tear of advanced age, including arthritis, cataracts, and a complete lack of elasticity to the skin. He's got a disturbing little-old-man face, but he's very much a baby in every other way. The moment Benjamin's father Thomas (Jason Flemyng) sees the baby, he snaps. His wife is in bed, hemorrhaging and sure to die, the result of giving birth to this twisted, diseased-looking baby. He grabs the baby and runs out into the streets, where all of New Orleans is celebrating the end of World War I. He wants to dump this creature, but he is seen by a police man who chases him from the waters edge. Thomas leaves the baby on the back steps of an old age home, as he leaves he shoves a few dollars into the baby's blanket, when Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) finds the baby. She decides she's going to raise him as her own, figuring that due to all the problems with his health, that won't be all that long anyway. And with this one act of cruelty and an equal act of kindness, Benjamin Button finds his place in the world and starts his very strange journey. There's a sense that Daisy and Caroline have been estranged, but she's at the hospital now. And thanks to the diary's collection of letters, photos and postcards, Caroline pieces together a story that completely changes her perception of her mother and, indeed, of herself. The diary is not just telling of Benjamin Buttons childhood but it gives Caroline an insight into the childhood of her own mother. Watching Ormond react as she's hit with all of these new ideas about who her mother was is quite moving. Benjamin's life is a lot of things over the years, goes through a lot of stages. Each of those encounters changes or shapes him, and none of them explode as high drama or melodrama. Instead, things have these slow-motion effects, detonations that are not felt immediately. One encounter is with tug boat Captain Mike (Jared Harris) who takes Benjamin to a whorehouse so he can be "with" a woman for the first time, he also gets him drunk for the first time. Than after Benjamin goes to New York to be with Daisy, she is with someone else, so Benjamin leaves and goes back to Captain Mike. They travel all over the world and Benjamin encounters Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton) in a hotel in Russia. What takes place between them is played with remarkable subtlety, and when it ends, it simply ends. The diary tells that when Daisy and Benjamin first meet, they're both children, emotionally speaking, and Daisy recognizes something in him, some kindred spirit. They bond, but he looks like a little old man and she's just a little girl, who is visiting her Grandmother Fuller (Phyllis Somerville). They both know it won't last. The next time they meet, in one of the film's most quietly painful sequences, he looks to be in his 50s. She's not quite 20 at this point, beautiful and ripe and young, and completely immature. She's willing to be with him, but maturity-wise, they're not ready to connect, and the encounter ends badly. It's only later, when the two of them reach the same age, after both of them have felt loss and sorrow and hurt, that they're able to approach each other as equals, as adults, with open eyes and open hearts. There is no bad guy introduced to steal Daisy's affections or to create some artificial tension in their relationship. Time is the only villain. And when they have a child and Benjamin realizes that he's not going to be able to be a real parent, time finally wins. He leaves again, setting off on the last leg of his journey alone. Along the way Benjamin meets his real father, has his first encounter with a prostitute, (Yasmine Abriel) learns about life and death, joins the war and sees death up close and personal. This is a heartfelt movie its not like being hit over the head, it makes it points ever so subtle like. The running time of this film is just over two hours and forty minutes and is due to be released at Christmas time. I give The Curious Case Of Benjamin Buttons a 4 and on my avoidance scale a 0, this is a great film, although there are a few slow moving scenes, when looked at as a whole this is a great movie.