Poetry moving backwards...

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2009)

I really don't understand all the critics attacking this gem of modern cinematography accusing this movie to be too abstract, too unusual, too unrealistic to be intense, moving, beautiful. Who said that cinema is all about telling true stories, about true events or true characters? We have emotions inside, and, as humans, we need to have our emotions, our feelings, touched by a movie that sometimes makes us think about things greater than us, like life, like all the tiny passing moments of pure joy, like the people we love, like the people we loose during a lifetime. This, and much, much more is "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". There is so much stuff, so much content beneath the surface of this wonderful adult tale.
The direction of David Fincher is absolutely amazing. We've got already a demonstration of his talents with perfect movies like "Fight Club", or his underrated vision of "Alien 3", the research of perfection, the colors always gray-shaded, the perfect photography of the scenes. This movie is no exceptions: it's perfect. All the scenes in all the sceneries (from old New Orleans, to Russia, passing through a moving set in the ocean).
The special effects are incredible: u can't tell where there's CGI here and where there's only an incredible makeup work to transform Brad Pitt in an old man then in a teenager, or the makeup work on Cate Blanchett (acting beautifully in her role).
The movie is long, yes, but it's about 3 hours of poetry, an hymn to life and to people we love,and about the short, but intense,pure moment of life. All moving backwards, like the clock at the train station at the beginning of the movie. Poetry moving backwards.
All this magic is decorated with a beautiful soundtrack performed by Alexandre Desplat.
In conclusion, "Benjamin Button" wants to tell us a story: a story about life seen with the eyes of a man aging backwards, of an almost impossible love, and a story about the endless, infinite, cycle of life.
It's impossible to not appreciate such ambitious, yet strange movie. It's impossible to remain cold at the end of this intense, magic voyage through time. It's a movie everybody must see, because everybody must see life through the eyes of Benjamin Butt once...at least...
10/10