Not a Feel Good Movie But Worth Every Moment

Rating: 9/10 (5 February 2009)

The predominant theme of this fable is the impermanence of life and the loss we suffer because of it. If you've read anything about Eastern religion, you will be very familiar with the ideas of impermanence and the futility of trying to hang on to anything, but as Westerners, some of us may be unprepared for the way this theme slowly creeps over us during this story. After thirty minutes in, I realized I was in for a hard ride emotionally.
This is one of the most lovely and melancholy movies I have ever sat through.
The story is narrated by both Benjamin and the love of his life, Daisey, while she is on her death bed in a New Orleans hospital, with the help of Ben's diary. And a very bad storm is on the way.
I have heard comparisons of this movie to Forrest Gump. No, no, no and no. I'm not denying Hanks was good in the film, but it was totally contrived. Ben isn't present at a dozen history making events. In fact, the beauty of Ben's life is its simplicity.
Ever since I first heard of the premise of Benjamin Button, I wondered this: What happens to him in the end? Sure, aging backwards sounds great at first, and it is. 80. . . 70. . .60. . .50. . .40. . .30. . .20. . .then what? The human brain becomes fully mature at 20 or so, and at its peak at around 21 or 25. Beyond that, what happens to Ben? At some point he will start to lose his life memories, not because his brain is degenerating, but because it is devolving, along with the rest of him. In stead of being able to accumulate more and more knowledge, or even hang onto it, that knowledge, along with all those memories, will just . . .go. They'll evaporate. Just who will he be at ten? At five? Will he devolve into a infant, a fetus, then. . .what, pop out of existence? What a horrible fate. More horrible than old age, really, because my grandfather died at 94, with all his faculties and memories intact. He could add a column of numbers faster than I could enter them into a calculator and used gloat over this. He died quickly, of a stroke, one day.
And so it is. Ben simply regresses into childhood, with no memory of his great love, his encounter with a German submarine, his adopted mother, his friends, his own daughter, or anything at all. And it's not a blissful forgetting. Ben is frightened and confused as a child, sometimes hostile, full of behavioral problems arising from the strange shadows in his consciousness. Somewhere in the corner of his brain is the phantom of an entire existence, but what was it? He doesn't know. He can never know. He experiences a kind dementia, then devolves to a toddler. As an infant his little body simply fails, and he mercifully dies in the arms of his devoted ex-wife, then an old woman. "He opened his eyes at the end, and looked at me. And I knew he knew *who* I was."
Technically, the movie is a marvel, and Brad Pitt turns in a very understated and heartfelt performance. But you won't be marveling at the backwards aging Brad Pitt, you'll be immersed in the unfolding of Ben's life, the wonderful fable of the backwards running clock supposedly installed in New York's Grand Central Station, and the final image of Huricane Katrina's rising water, washing away the artifacts of a life.