The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as a film is a slowly building poem, beautiful and profound and something that you definitely have to be in a particular mood for in order to enjoy. In an age where film goers have come to expect more flashy special effects than story-telling, it is truly remarkable that it has gained the popularity that it has – and it is worth every contemplative moment. Based loosely on the F. Scott Fitzgerald story of the same title, Eric Roth and Robin Swicard’s screenplay is artfully wrought and well performed by the cast.

Brad Pitt’s performance is subtle, and thoughtful as the title character and Cate Blanchette brings her considerable grace and surprising range of vocal manipulation to bring Daisy to life. I was most struck by her voice as it changed to play Daisy from her teens to old age – capturing the sense of passing time almost more palpably than the Academy Award winning make-up. While the main characters carry the piece, there is one overlooked performance that felt as robust and real as anything one might live to see on screen, which is Jared Harris’s Captain Mike, the ship’s captain who takes the outwardly ancient but inwardly youthful Benjamin Button on as a sailor. While Harris is not particularly known for big budget Hollywood, he has an impressive string of awards on his resume. (And in this movie-watcher’s experience – anything with Jared Harris in it is worth watching.)

The plot is that a baby is born with signs of advanced age and abandoned, raised in an old folks home as he progressively grows younger, experiencing a wide range of adventures and having a few dalliances, all the while pining for his one great love, Daisy, with whom he eventually does connect. Daisy has a child, played by Julia Ormond. When the film opens, we see the daughter visiting Daisy, who gives her daughter Benjamin’s journal to read out loud, so that the daughter may know her father. This is how the story unfolds for the audience.

One of the modern day events in the film, which is the one thing that poked me as irritating, is that as Daisy is on her death bed, Hurricane Katrina is raging in the background, approaching and then making landfall in New Orleans by the end of the film. While it did provide an excuse for some poetic imagery at the end, I found that every mention of Hurricane Katrina felt like an intrusion on the story – an interruption in my suspension of disbelief. But, if you can ignore that, otherwise the film is pretty much flawless.