Curious, indeed!

Rating: 3/10 (25 January 2009)

There are some things wrong and some things right with this movie, but the former outnumber the latter.
First, what's right: the art direction. Every image, every shot has been executed with great attention to detail and the authentic look. The New Orleans of the 1920s and thereafter, the New York of the 1940s, the episodes at sea during WWII feel right and credible. I'm not sure how much of these scenes were computer-generated, but the money spent was not wasted. The same can be said with regard to all the CGI work.
Next, the love story: I believed the chemistry between Benjamin and Daisy, as well as the lifelong mutual attraction they felt. First love often refuses to wane,even if circumstances intervene and impede it, as they did in this case. For this reason, the middle part of the movie where Benjamin and Daisy reunite is the most watchable. Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt are convincing in the display of passion for one another. In fact, all of the actors in the film are very good, outstanding among them the actress who plays Benjamin's mother, Queenie, the actor who plays the Irish captain, and an actress I admire, Tilda Swinton as the British diplomat's wife.
I also think, however, all the actors were wasted in a film whose point is lost upon me, and this is where my dissatisfaction with the film lies. I believe it attempts to say and do too many different things, and it fails to accomplish any of them compellingly. If this is a love story, then it's formulaic and hardly original. We've had too many movies where an elderly person on his or her deathbed recalls a great love once lived. That storyline was used in The Notebook and Evening with better results. If, on the other hand, the point of the movie is to depict 20th century historical events in the US, then where was the Depression of the 1930s? The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s? The Vietnam War? The social conscience of the 1960s and the 1970s is replaced with footage of The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. And the formula of looking at history through an individual life was done better in Forrest Gump. If, finally, the film attempts to underscore the fragility of our lives and the random events that shape them (Daisy's accident and the end of her dance career), that point was made early on in the movie, as soon as an elderly character began repeating to Benjamin that he was struck seven times by lightning. All references to life's tenuousness became repetitive after that, which brings me to my last complaint: the film was too long. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is, indeed, a curious film, not in best sense of that word. It tries too hard to be significant, and it fails.