Fine, but not fulfilling

Rating: 7/10 (23 February 2009)

It is fair to say that when I knew David Fincher is going to do a movie about a man aging backwards, I was expecting a film which is dark (true to Fincher's other film tones), but ends with a note like 'there is hope, there is a bright light'. When the movie came out, the grapevine had it that the film instead was trying to endorse a meaning or the nostalgia of life.
OK, I'll get this straight. I personally have very high expectations when a film tries to talk about life in a whole. I've read some wonderful books that taught me what my life is all about, but Benjamin Button is little more than a cinematic painting which is beautiful and runs like a small poem, has nostalgia in spurts and more. The film is beautiful in as many parts as it is somewhat depressing.
The major disappointment about this film is that the concept could have been transformed into a much better story. Instead, the writers chose to place the Curious man named Benjamin in a silent commodity of living his life like any other man outside there, instead of showing him as the miracle that he could have been. End of the day, he was just a man who lived. The miracle was missing.
I had troubles trying to get 'its talking about life' concept out of my mind till halfway through the movie, and I knew this film isn't about life, but instead it is about a man who was in many ways different yet similar to rest of human beings. The film could so easily be about a regular human being who ages just normally, because the reverse aging concept isn't blown enough to take centre stage in the whole film. What Fincher has ultimately told in this movie is that offers us similar joy and similar pain, even if we were living it in different ways.
All said and done, the movies is a beautiful painting. Exquisite camera-work, art direction, and spellbinding special effects on the older Benjamin are huge high points for the film. But what lets it down is the film's stale narrative structure, elaboration of many unnecessary scenes or events, at many points I simply don't get what message the film is trying to send out. Because, all the time, the film pretends like it has something important to say- while it doesn't have anything such.
The film's aesthetic features reminds me of both Forest Gump and American Beauty, but there seems to be a middling hand and you end up getting a slightly mish-mashed film. Despite the film's slow pace, some scenes that should have been elaborated more are instead put on an expressway train, it seems like the makers have conveniently skipped doing any scenes that could have a real pang in your heart. Very few scenes make you feel really sad, and even those aren't helped by some very silent, non-reactive acting by Brad Pitt (don't mistake me, he was brilliant in this film I think, but this is more the director's fault) or I should say the characterization. Not one scene of crying in the whole film and they made Benjamin look like young monk who knows what it is like to lose your loved ones and is used to it. The character transformation is almost non-existent.
Cate Blanchett is beautiful and adequate but as said Fincher and the team's monologue-like approach in a film where there is hardly any much dialogue doesn't help any actors show off their prowess. Tilda Swinton's character seemed to have no bearing on the story and was added just for the sake of it.
But, at the end of the day, it is a beautiful film externally but it just lacks more soul that it could have had. I couldn't hate this film, because I enjoyed it, but I couldn't love it either, because this should have been much much more.