tock tick, tock tick

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2009)

Every once in a while  a very long while  a film comes along that is fully worthy of your total suspension of disbelief, where you can sink comfortably into the theatre seat and simply take it in, knowing you're in completely competent hands. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was one of those extraordinarily rare films, for me.
Within the first 20 minutes of this masterpiece  a word I don't use lightly or often  I knew it was gonna be OK; I could relax, let go and just allow the story to wash over me. And what a story it is, this one. It sounds weird, when you first hear the premise  Brad Pitt's character aging backwards, starting out as an old man (who reminded me of an extremely wizened Robert Redford) and getting younger as he goes on. However, within the context of the film it works brilliantly. It's tied in to how a clockmaker creates a clock that goes backwards in time; he built it that way in the hope that it would somehow bring back loved ones who died during war. So the weird concept doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's given a grounded basis, however fantastical that basis is.
That's the thing about this film ~ it's got this fantastical element at the center of it, but the story itself is grounded in reality, the reality of life  its joys, its sorrows, its surprises, its moments of transcendent beauty and the sometimes devastating discovery that things most often work out much differently than one imagines or dreams they will. At its core, this is a story about love  the love of a woman, Queenie (a heartfelt, beautiful performance from Taraji P. Henson), for a horrific-looking little baby, the love of a father for his son, the love of a man for a woman and a woman (Cate Blanchett's stunning performance) for a reversely-aging man.
At the heart of the film, of course, is Brad Pitt's perfect turn as Benjamin. Aside from all the other wonderful things he brings to it, his part needed someone physically beautiful, to give full power to the segment of the movie where Benjamin is in the magnificent glory of his prime. Vincent Gallo, as great as he is, wouldn't have cut it, is what I'm saying. Pitt's physical beauty gives deep resonance to this segment ~ there's a heartbreaking feeling to this part of the film, making what follows even more chilling, as we see him become younger and younger, until even the memories of his incredibly-lived life are obliterated by his ever-regressing child's brain.
A few more things that deserve mention: there's a great turn by the wonderful Tilda Swinton, who finally realizes her dream of being the first woman to swim the England Channel, at age 68, and also one from the great Jared Harris, as the colorful, consistently inebriated artist/sailor, Captain Mike. His character provides a lot of the humor in the film, and there is a lot of humor throughout, though never at the expense of the characters. The rest of the casting is perfect, as well  for instance, you really believe that the younger Daisy has grown up to be Cate Blanchett.
Screenwriter Roth and director Fincher make all the right choices in this epic piece of film making. This is the kind of film that movie theatres were created for in the first place, it's the kind of movie that cannot be rationalized or intellectualized or nitpicked to pieces - it simply must be experienced, in all the rarity of its awe-inspiring wonder.
My favorite line, the most eloquent and the most ironic, is in the scene where Benjamin has become a youth (sort of reminding us how he looked in "Thelma and Louise" so many years ago), and Daisy gasps, "You've gotten so much younger!" and he replies, with hard-earned, world-weary wisdom, "Only on the outside."