The Curious Case of Benjamin Button | Eastern North Carolina Now

    
The Reversal of the Natural Birth to Death Process Offers a Curious Perspective

    "Benjamin Button," a rejected infant, overcomes overwhelming obstacles to live a purposeful life in reverse. The natural order of "youth being wasted on the young" is in conflict with the unnatural process of Benjamin being born as an infant arthritic old man, near death.

    Benjamin is born into a wealthy family, the Buttons, in New Orleans on the World War I VE day in 1918. His mother died in child birth and Benjamin, obviously, possesses the visage of a baby crying abomination. Upon seeing the wrinkled aberration of humanity, his father, played by Jason Flemyng, leaves the baby on the steps of a private home for the elderly, where he is discovered by Queenie, played by Taraji P. Henson, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

    Queenie has the proverbial heart of gold, and gives her unconditional love to that baby infirmed to the point of a dying old man. Benjamin's life, as he grows younger into a very little old man, is one of profound irony in the "old folk's home," as he gets younger as the older folks residing there get older and eventually die.

    Eric Roth's screenplay that is very loosely based on a short story of the same title, written by literary great F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in Colliers Magazine in 1921, exhibits a literary temperament toward the ironic as this fantastic tale is told of Benjamin's great adventures at sea, in battle during World War II, and his various love affairs as he ages backwards as those people in his world grow older. Director David Fincher incorporates tight dramatic scenes, packing as much action in the semi - sepia glow, suggesting past days from the haze of memories in muted colors of times remembered.

    "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" did win three Oscars: one for Art Direction, another for Visual Effects, and yet another for Makeup. Why the makeup? Taking the 45 year old Brad Pitt, Benjamin Button, from a little old man (three other actors in full makeup helped play the hobbled old man growing into a younger Benjamin, but it was mostly Brad Pitt's remade face and voice in these scenes) struggling to maintain in a younger man's world, as he ages in reverse. Eventually toward the end of the film Actor Pitt metamorphosed into a 16 year old teenager that must have taken some magnificent work for the experts in makeup, including the excellent Oscar winning visual effects to pull off the diminished relative scale in Benjamin's person as a teenager and as the aforementioned little old man.

    While the film is certainly not perfect, and I will explain the obvious problems; however, the art direction is outstanding and lifts the entire picture to a higher level by at least a half a star for my tastes in film - the picture is important. In fact, the first half of the film, when Benjamin is the older man as he negotiates the perils of 1920's / 1930's New Orleans, is worth the renting or the buying of the DVD. Some of the best special effects of the film were the time in Benjamin's life that he worked on the tug boat, Chelsea, with Captain Mike, played by Jared Harris. The aforementioned muted colors of near sepia are truly spectacular as the tug boat negotiates the sense of an older New Orleans on the Mississippi, a snow covered Murmansk, Russia (of the former Soviet Union) and the Chelsea as it is drawn into a fire fight with an enemy Nazi submarine. The attention to detail in these scenes is nearly perfect.

    I was; however, less impressed with some of the vague symbolic references to the huge clock built to run in reverse, and the continuous references to Hurricane Katrina. I live in a hurricane prone area (I have endured 10 hurricanes), and I do sincerely believe the whole Katrina tragedy has been vastly overblown. It seemed to cheapen the effect of what could have been a powerful story. Also, I was not impressed with the death bed confessional by Daisy, Benjamin Button's little old man / childhood love interest, and later his wife. It was a weak segue by a woman near death that could barely be understood. The use of her daughter, Caroline played by Julia Ormond to read the written journal by Benjamin, as the dramatic platform to launch the story watered down its potential effect. A robust actress of Cate Blanchett's stature, who played the older Daisy, should never be wasted on the withering dramatic effect of a weakened dying woman.

    "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was still a fine film overall, and is well worth the 166 minutes it took to tell the expanded version of this story loosely based on the Fitzgerald short story. Look to the best within the film, stay optimistic, enjoy the picture.

    Rated PG13. Released on DVD May 12, 2009.

    This article provided courtesy of our sister site: Better Angels Now