Beautiful, touching, yet flawed

Rating: 7/10 (8 February 2009)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Top 10 - 2008
The film is based on the 1921 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgeral. David Fincher's film is about a man born with the characteristics of an 80 year old, apart from mental agility, and ages backwards, until he once again diminishes into the physical form of a child, while he suffers from dementia.
Benjamin Button was born on Armistice Day 1918 in New Orleans, Louisiana as a deformed child - his mother died in childbirth and his father horrified by the monstrosity of the newborn takes it away and drops it at the doorsteps of a elderly people's home, where Queenie(Taraji P. Henson), an African-American worker at the house raises the child and calls his 'Benjamin'. The New Orleans residence plays a key part in the film, with so many lives passing in and out. That is also where Benjamin meets Daisy and it becomes the central love affair of the film between their older counterparts (Pitt and Blanchett). Benjamin and Daisy have a very similar fade in and fade out relationship as Forrest Gump and Jenny, a film with many parallels to Button. No surprise since both were written by Eric Roth, who won an Academy Award for his great translation of Forrest Gump onto the screen.
The film begins with Daisy (Blanchett) in her hospital bed, ready to die in New Orleans, right before Hurricane Katrina hit, where her middle aged daughter reads her a thick diary, which centres around the life of Benjamin Button and her existence in his life. The structure of the film is successful and while there are a few flaws resulting from perhaps one or two overextended scenes, the 166 minute film is still probably a masterpiece.
While many have called 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' a well made film, with no real point, one critic unjustifiably calling it a 'dumbed down Forrest Gump', I disagree. The film itself is a testament to great film-making and David Fincher firstly must receive praise for constructing such a difficult film with great detail, dark tones and appropriate artistic flair. Furthermore, while the film can be labelled as a fantasy, it still a poetic journey about life, love, the process of ageing and humanity, and how as the film's tagline states (and the film itself shows) that life is measured in moments not minutes. Particularly, the last 45 minutes of the film are emotionally intense and somewhat haunting. Lastly the film passes one great obstacle that many other films fail to encompass - it is a big budget, main stream film, but also a quality motion picture.
A fine film
8/10