The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

 One of those posts that for some reason didn't make it online when it was first written. Just rediscovered it and thought it was worth adding here. It's a review of what turned out to be an unexpected marvel. I think I caught up on it some years after it was made, on a streaming service. 

The notion behind The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was always going to cause difficulties for the writer of this movie: firstly in the outworking of the idea that a man could be born old and gradually get younger – it has potential for disaster all along the line – and perhaps more importantly from a dramatic point of view, the loss of the main actor, the star, from the last ten minutes of the movie, at a time when he’s perhaps most needed to complete the thing.

 Surprisingly these two factors are, in general, overcome.  They still cause the movie to be less than it might have been, nevertheless Benjamin Button proved to be a much better movie than I expected. I think it’s too long; there’s an overindulgence in extraneous material. There are two framing stories rather than one (the backwards clock is interesting but essentially fluffery in terms of the movie itself, as is the hummingbird theme, there because hummingbirds can fly backwards). The affair with the spy’s wife in Russia, though superbly done, contributes nothing to the ongoing story. The red herring of the way in which a series of delays can cause someone to be in the wrong place at the wrong time is a great piece of filmmaking, full of detail, and yet it actually has nothing to do with the story. The summing-up piece at the end which points up the different gifts of various characters. Is it necessary? Nope, we’ve already seen these gifts throughout the movie. 

Take all these out and it would have been a much leaner movie, and maybe more effective.  Yet, perhaps to contradict what I’ve already said, all these ‘extras’ are actually very enjoyable, if you allow yourself just to take them as they come. They bring a kind of Dickensian flavour to the film in the sense that Dickens was never averse to adding in extraneous but rich material. (His book, The Pickwick Papers, has several short stories included in it, usually told by characters who have nothing to do with the main story. He avoided this technique in his later books, but never got over the use of including characters who wouldn’t be missed if they hadn’t been there. Another 19^th century writer, Victor Hugo, often stops the story in Les Miserables to write an essay on one of the aspects of his story, such as convents, or the Paris sewers.) 

In Benjamin Button there are also too many themes: missing fathers, loss of time, wasting time, the value of individual gifts, death in the midst of life. Yet within the context of this particular movie, the embarressment de riches somehow works, and keeps the viewer’s mind active. There’s no single straightforward path through this movie.  

Brad Pitt plays the innocent ‘old’ man as someone with eyes wide open to the extraordinary nature of the world, a man without guile. I think it’s a superb piece of characterization, perhaps one of the best things he’s ever done. Cate Blanchett always has a kind of severity about her, and yet this works well in the complex nature of her character as Button’s lifelong love. Curiously, his other passion, played by Tilda Swinton, looks so much like Blanchett at times, that for a while I thought it was the same actress playing both roles. There may be an intention behind this. The vast cast of other actors are all excellent in roles big and small.     

The photography by Claudio Miranda is superb, always at one with the tone of the movie.   Shot after shot uses colour to heighten the emotion of the scene. Yes, I know this isn’t unusual in movies, but it’s certainly done with great art here. Miranda has worked with both Brad Pitt and the director of this movie, David Fincher, before. (Fincher also directed the highly acclaimed, Social Network.)  There’s obviously a compatibility at work. 

And the special effects are seamless: it’s hard to know where Brad Pitt ends and one of the other actors who play his role begins – or vice versa. Several younger actors are credited with the role – though it’s obvious which ones play Button in the last stages of his life, it’s not so obvious in the early stages. 

 This is the sort of movie to take your time over. Don’t be put off by its length (some 166 minutes). Accept it as it is, and enjoy its trips down side alleys, and its delight in human beings. 

Interesting montage of the various stages 
of Button's life. 
Sorry, I've lost the address of the site it came from.