A love story and a reflection on the pass of time

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2011)

A wonderful movie that tells the story of Benjamin Button -a child born old and ailing who grows backwards into a child- who is abandoned at the door of a New Orleans Afro-American family, and his love story with a childhood friend.
The movie is both a love story and a reflection on the pass of time in life, what is important in becoming old and in getting old,. However, the two main elements of the story get lost in the middle of superfluous sub-stories and scenes that don't add anything to the core of what the movie intends to be.
The prologue of the movie, a short story tale actually, is brilliant as there is depth, abstraction and magic in it, and is the perfect and necessary setting to comprehend the oddness of the story that follows. The last minutes of the film are also fantastic, poetic and very moving, and the perfect closure to such a creative an original story.
Despite being a wonderful love story, we have to wait about one hour for the proper love story to commence, and once it starts all happens in a hurry. The script is based on a short story, so there is not excuse for such a long footage, to wait one hour for the core of the movie to be displayed to the viewer. I think that many of the elements and sub-stories could have been chopped easily without the film suffering much. To put just one example, all the part of old Daisy agonizing in the hospital during the Hurricane Katrina, during more than 2 hours, is overly melodramatic and doesn't add anything of interest to the movie, as the only element that makes sense in that part could have been easily inserted in another way.
Cate Blanchet is wonderful as always, very believable in his role as a dancer first, and ballet teacher then. Brad Pitt delights us with glimpses of his old self and acting brilliance in the first half of the film, when he's and old arthritic weird boy; it is not the make-up or the special effects, it is him, the actor, shining. However, once the character gets older and therefore young in the story, when we start to see Pitt in all his corporeal splendor, his acting suffers, Pitt's expression becomes forced and hieratic. It is as if Pitt felt overwhelmed each time his pretty face is the center of attention. That doesn't happen to Blanchet, who is magnificent all the way through.
The supporting actors, mostly elderly, are also believable and delightful in their roles as residents in a nursing home. Also wonderful are all the actors who play the sailors. However, I did not like the actor who plays Button's biological father, Jason Flamyng, too stiff and average in his performance.
I loved Tilda Swinton and Pitt in their short love sub-story, which is fantastic in mood, atmosphere and acting - 1950s Hollywood glamor recreated to perfection.
The sepia-toned atmosphere and the cinematography are extremely beautiful. I found the special effects and 3D animation superbly blended into the actors' faces, especially the young Button and the young Daisy. Aging make-up is especially good on Pitt, not so much on Blanchet.
A good enjoyable and original movie with great acting that suffers from the long footage and a script that doesn't know how to focus on the important.