The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 film directed by David Fincher, and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. It follows a man who is born as an old man, and ages in reverse, meaning he gets younger. This film had a lot of potential, and it succeeds in some accounts, however, it actively shoots itself in the foot by having a monologue about how all things are temporary in every other scene.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button follows Benjamin, a baby born in 1918 right after the first World War ends. However, unlike other people, Benjamin ages in reverse. He starts off as an old man who can barely walk, and dies as a baby. The story mostly focuses around his relationship with Daisy, a childhood friend who ages normally.
As stated previously, this movie had a lot of potential. A man who ages in reverse, while not a terribly ground-breaking idea, nonetheless lends itself to some interesting scenarios in a movie. The film capitalizes on some of them, such as Benjamin’s teenage years aboard a ship where he first gets drunk, or how he falls in love with an older woman in his early twenties. Additionally, the side character’s are very interesting in this movie, Captain Mike and Benjamin’s adopted mother Queenie in particular. Captain Mike is a drunkard boat captain who gives Benjamin his first job, and introduces him to the more wild side of humanity, while Queenie adopts Benjamin after his father leaves him, and raises him coincidentally in a nursing home she works at. Both these characters are very likable, and had sufficient screen time. Benjamin himself is also a good character, although he does feel a bit like just another cliche protagonist, since he really doesn’t have a terribly new personality, with his only real defining trait being that he’s implied to be a bit of a playboy. Still, Brad Pitt does a good job in the role, and he works as a protagonist. Benjamin’s love interest Daisy on the other hand, really doesn’t captivate the audience until the end, when she raises Benjamin as he’s a baby. When she’s younger, she’s very unfair to Benjamin, and then inexplicably changes and falls in love with him. It feels a little abrupt, as in the previous scene she literally told him she wanted him out of her life.
The main problem with this film is that it has a lot of blatant, inescapable, in-your-face dialogue about the temporary nature of people in our lives. “Subtlety,” is evidently not a word known to this movie when it comes to imparting a theme on the audience. There are so many scenes of characters talking about how they never got to do their dreams, or how they’ll die soon. Because of this, the theme is so obvious with this film it gets annoying. This makes the movie seem pretentious, when in reality it really isn’t. Donnie Darko is pretentious. Benjamin Button, is simply incompetent with it’s dialogue.
However, in spite of the dialogue, towards the end of the film, it mellows out and they stop with the annoying scenes about life being temporary. (Ironically it’s because most of the side characters those scenes included have died.) I found myself crying a bit at the end of this movie, mainly because Benjamin has a death that is sad and unique. This movie is far from perfect, and it feels a bit like a first year film student was given a blank check. However, it is nonetheless a film worth watching, if for nothing else then the emotional ending.