A mild case of Benjamin Button

Rating: 6/10 (31 December 2008)

Watching Benjamin Button's life unfolding on screen is like watching a reverse process of sunset. Wouldn't that be "sunrise"? You may ask. No, it is not sunrise, it is a reverse sunset. What exactly does it mean then? That's the question that got me scratching my head upon the moment the credit started rolling on the screen.
Mystically affected by a giant clock that was built by an agonizing father who wish to turn back time so his son would not have died in WWI, Benjamin was born with a rare condition. He was born a dying old man who would then grow younger and younger everyday. Does this unique ability offer Benjamin any special perspective on life? Well, one can not really tell as Benjamin pretty much lived the same way like you and me, except the apparent anomaly noted above. His uniqueness or weirdness was rather well accepted by everyone he encountered. People treated him absolutely like any other human being, sometime even better. Following the same line of complaint, everybody got along surprisingly well from early 20's all the way to present time. Consider the racial tension, war time and economical depressions throughout the era, the movie's fairy tale like peaceful setting makes me feel rather disconnected from the time and space it was trying to depict.
In the early part of this film, looking oddly like a well behaved and well dressed Gollum, our Benjamin mostly sit quietly an observer. He's more like a senile old man than a reckless child with an old man's body. He pretty much persisted in that way throughout the rest of the film, never angry, never overly joyful, and never showed any true anguish, conflicts or depression, nor did he showed any fear. He pretty much accept life with a tired smile and life pretty much treated him the same way. Such complacency nullified any dramatic undertone that the director may try to paint.
The second part of the movie was driven by the love story between Benjamin and his childhood friend Daisy. Though know her since very young age, Benjamin's life was pretty much parallel to her until they collide in midpoint, at conveniently ripe age for love.
Now, the story of Benjamin's life was told by the narratives from hospital bed ridden old Daisy and her daughter's reading of Benjamin's dairy. I don't know why director chose to tell the story this way. It never added anything to the story. As matter of fact, it completely ruined any surprises and fail to draw emotional response from viewer by way of the unknown twist and turns of the love story. Because from the very early on, we already know that this old woman is Daisy who must be a significant part of Benjamin's life, they must have fallen love with each other and they must have spent big chunk of their lives together. This really had taken away the effect of the love story between the two on audiences.
After the high point of the relationship between Benjamin and daisy, the movie pretty much proceed like a receding tide, there are some spots of minor waves here and there, but mostly, Benjamin fades into obscurity.
This movie, like Benjamin's eventful yet oddly emotionally bland life, can be likened to a peaceful sunset in reverse. It is not quite a sunrise, because though Benjamin grows younger, he ages mentally pretty much the same way like rest of us. This special gift of reverse aging doesn't seem to award him any special wisdom nor give him any dramatically different perspectives on life. His life is pretty much void of any conflicts. Things come and go quietly. Nothing on the screen really stirs up a big storm though Benjamin had been through plenty of storms throughout his life and eventually came out all unharmed and hardly even bothered. Because of this, I considered the movie somewhat a disappointment because the it failed to fulfill the potential of the unconventional premise of the source material.
There are few points to note, though they are never really fully fleshed out. Benjamin seems to have a very keen sense of the causal effects of time and events. At certain key points of movie, he's able to reconstruct a seemingly random event from the perspective of an agnostic determinism. Upon investigating a little deeper, I realize that Benjamin, though age reversely, did not actually live life reversely. Therefore, the perspective came rather unnaturally, forced and out of place, especially the sequence proceeding the third encounter with Daisy. (I shall not spoil any plot).
From the technical point of view, this movie deserves a sound applause. From the music score, set design, special effects and the cinematic, they are all well polished and skillfully executed. The make ups and the facial special effects is extremely well done consider that this movie would not be possible at all without it. The facial special effects can be a little distracting from time to time, but it is still among the best I've seen in Hollywood.
Overall, it is one of the better movies in 2008 though failed to fulfill its full potential.