The Kissable Writer reviews David Fincher's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (part1)

Rating: 10/10 (20 April 2009)

Dear reader, As you may or may not be aware of my shameless David Fincher fan-boy status, if you are, I need not tell you the levels of psychetude in my bloodstream reached dangerous levels the eve before my visit to the theater to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". As I have discussed on a few occasions, expectations this high usually make the boat head unwaveringly for shelves of disaster.
We already knew David Fincher can apply his vast technical talent and intuition on grisly, provocative source material. Case in point: Se7en, where the bowels of Dante's hell are opened up for two hours. We already knew David Fincher is able to shape a parallel universe where the wondrous appears completely natural. Case in point: Fight Club, where it's perfectly normal to live in a dusty dump and make soap all day without arousing any suspicion. We already knew David Fincher is passionate enough about his art to respect his Noir influences without being too scared to expand upon the themes of the genre. Case in point: Se7en, the movie where the ending implodes as the only innocent lamb in the movie gets slaughtered, a barrier even the gloomiest Noirs haven't broken. We already knew no two Fincher directions remotely resemble one another, even when he boldly tries to upstage his own serial killer movie. Case in point: Zodiac, where the, eventually fruitless, obsession to track down a killer makes more victims than the actual murders. What we didn't know is that Fincher is the only leopard in the world that can change it's spots. With "Benjamin Button", he has created a life-affirming epic that combines these aforementioned skills and have them result in a product that's a hell of a lot more than the sum of it's parts.
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a lengthy picture, spinning one theme and keeping the camera steady on one actor for 160 minutes. The theme is mortality. The actor is Brad Pitt. Not that you're going to recognize him in the first reel. In case you've been living on the moon for the past six months, Benjamin Button ages backwards. From crib to wheelchair, from cue-ball to wavy locks, from distinguished wrinkles to bad complexion, well you get the idea. On paper, this comes off silly. But Fincher wouldn't be the man who walks in his own shoes if he didn't strike an interesting chord right off the bat. You see, Benjamin spends his days not moaning about his sore muscles or finger-thick glasses, he doesn't mind living with the Damocles' sword of knowing he will probably die way before a normal man's time. He takes every day as it comes, lives the hell out of it, and doesn't lose a wink of sleep worrying. A girl, as their innate ability is shattering hearts with a shy smile or a magical movement, destabilizes his life; he instantly falls in love with her and even though the puppy love is as requited as the situation allows it to be, later on she matures and he has a hard time understanding her rejection.
Benjamin journeys to far away places on a tugboat, the captain of which is a self-proclaimed artist whose own body serves as a canvas. He begrudgingly followed in his father's sailor footsteps, but every tattoo forms a reminder of where his heart and passions truly lie. Benjamin observes that the man's anger is only skin-thick but his joie de vivre and acceptance of his plight go right down to the bone. He brushes sides (and other body parts too) with a lonely, dream-robbed middle-aged wife who once cherished the ambition of swimming across the English channel. At this point, Benjamin Button still has the anything but dashing looks of father time himself, and the wife herself (played by the completely average looking but great actress Tilda Swinton) didn't exactly walk right out of a pin-up calendar, yet their attraction grows to a physical point, because their personalities click so well. Benjamin lets go off the (still widely believed) notion that physical beauty equals beauty and by extension the possibility of being loved, and is deeply pleased by the door of hope this hidden truth swings wide open. The relationship "ran it's course", as Benjamin himself states at one point; a phrase embodying acceptance and inner peace like few other in four short words.
He encounters his father, who gave him up after seeing the elephant man-esquire creature that he daren't call his son born out of a dead mother. As all fathers should, he teaches his son, who is unaware of the identity of the man sitting across from him, how to drink and between the lines we can read the shame he's feeling and the pride replacing it. Here it is Benjamin who hands out a lesson: never try to change someone because every one is perfect in one way or another.
At the end of the second act, most characters Benjamin met up with have gone gentle into that good night; he mourns but he doesn't linger on the pain. Because "we're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?". Who wants to live forever? An intricate part of whether or not the movie will resonate with a part within you lies in the classic love blooming between Benjamin and Daisy. Does the fact that it's a romanticized movie love alienate you or does it melt your heart because you understand the power of movie love can be found in the smallest, tenderest of gestures: a kiss on the forehead to awaken someone, seeing the world in someone's eyes, comfortably sharing silence and a moment of beauty that's heightened by the mere presence of that someone.
End of part 1.