very deep and philosophical movie

Rating: 8/10 (1 March 2009)

I am very surprised by the fact that so many people do not understand this movie. And yet, what is even more surprising, this does not prevent those people to criticize it. I will agree that the movie is hard to grasp and slow-paced, but that is it as far as its faults go. Everything else is miraculous. As a student of English literature I have read Fitczcherald, Harold Pinter, Shakespeare (to whom there is, by no accident, a reference made in the movie itself) and many others who deal with the transitoriness of human life. It is an altogether, reoccurring subject in literature, and thus on film too. This movie deals with our speedy passage through life and departure from this world. It strives to teach young generations who are caught up in the "rat race" that there is more to life. As I once read "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away!!!". I learned a lot from this movie and I feel obliged to defend it. First of all I will start with the title of the movie itself. Benjamin Button was not just a name picked up cause it is catchy, and buttons are not mentioned so often in vain either- they are a reoccurring symbol. There is a play by Harold Pinter named "Peer Gynt". At the end of the play the Button Molder, the play's "judge" of humanity, appears. His commission is to melt down souls in preparation for death. More particularly, those whose sins had been significant qualify for Hell, those who were virtuous qualify for Heaven. But if you wasted your life in vain your soul becomes a non-entity boiling in a vat. So the message is : Live your life! Some choices may be bad and some may be good but anything is better than drifting! Button Molder (i.e God) forgives sins, rewards good, but he doesn't forgive wasting of a life he bestowed us with. As Captain Mike says, and Benjamin later cites "... all is forgiven and forgotten when the end comes". The hummingbird is the symbol of the same thing. At one point captain Mike says that if we were to stop the wings of the humming bird for one moment it would die. The humanity, as the humming bird, has to move forward although we all know we are going toward the same thing- old age and dying. In order to understand our life we must look back but in order to live our life we must move forward all the time. It seems that the author tries to warns us that our obsession to stop the aging process is in vain, even if we go backwards like Benjamin we will also have to die eventually. It is important that when the Button Molder comes to judge our humanity we have something that proves we have lived- whether it be love, experience, art or something else (as Benjamin comments at the end too: some dance, some do Shakespeare, some are mothers, some are lovers). Maybe then our soul can fly off with the humming bird, but the time (big clock that was supposed to turn back time for a grieving father) will go on ticking, and it doesn't matter in which direction, the result is always the same. No one knows how much time he is given- so people start using your time! For example WATCH THIS MOVIE!