The parable of backwards time and a backwards dancer

Rating: 3/10 (3 February 2009)

What an indulgent ramble!
This was a loose string of vignettes gathered together around the fantasy of one individual for whom time runs backwards, a child born old and growing younger. Put together over this huge length of time it was supposed to somehow give us enlightenment and a bit of universal truth about the the nature of life, the universe and everything. That is the function of a parable, and it seems that Fincher set out to make one, but forgot that parables are usually pithy and to the point. I haven't read the F Scott Fitzgerald short story, but maybe at 20 pages (according to some contributors here) that's just what it is.
Let's look at a couple of these vignettes. Firstly the Monsieur Gateau story, which was totally apt and to the point, the magnificent clock he made to run backwards in the hope that it would wind back time and undo the carnage of WW1, returning his only son from his grave in a Flanders field. That was very moving, especially the run-backwards shots of the fallen soldiers rising up out of the mud and gore, and made me hope for good things.
Amidst Daisy's death bed mumbles I never quite caught a link between the backwards clock and Benjamin's life running in that direction, and maybe none was made. Perhaps it was just a "what if?" statement as a foreword to the main story. But then that main 'story' simply got lost, hopelessly so.
Take the vignette about the sequence of chance events that led to Daisy being struck by a Parisian taxi. Utter irrelevance, adding I don't know how many minutes to an already overlong movie. Every road accident has 101 elements of pure chance, and hers was no different, and let's face it, if you are going to dance backwards into a Paris street from behind a parked truck, you have a damn good chance of getting run over, and if you don't, you are left with a 100% certainty of stepping in a dog turd when you reach the opposite pavement.
I stepped in an hugely overlong dog turd called 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'.
I'll give it 3 for a few good moments, especially M. Gateau, but I think I'm being generous.