The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Movie Review (2008)

Directed by David Fincher, written by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, 167 minutes, rated PG-13.

David Fincher’s memorable new drama, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” is the story of a child born into a wealthy New Orleans family, but who upon his birth is so hideous to behold (he looks like a cured loin of pork, only wiggling, screeching and alive), that his father, Thomas Button (Jason Flemyng), snatches him from the room where his wife just died in child birth.

Rushing through streets that bring him to a river, Thomas is prepared to drown his son when a policeman blows a whistle--and the chase is on.  Eventually, it ends at the doorstep of a retirement home, where Thomas leaves his son swaddled on stairs that lead to the woman who will become his surrogate mother.  Her name is Queenie and she’s played by Taraji P. Henson in a no-nonsense performance that’s among the year’s best.

Loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” reveals its curiosities the moment Queenie pulls back the swaddling blanket and finds inside the oddity of an old man caught in an infant’s body.  Since Queenie can’t have children of her own, she decides to make this one her own.  She names him Benjamin and enters into a bittersweet journey that questions what it must be like to live one’s life while aging backwards. 

The answers are the usual suspects--triumph and tragedy, happiness and despair, love and loss--only turned on its side in ways that allow for an unusual kind of cruelness to creep in.  Just what that is is best left for the screen.

For a narrator, the movie offers Caroline (Julia Ormond), who is given a memoir from her dying mother Daisy (Cate Blanchett) and asked to read it aloud while, just outside their New Orleans hospital room, Hurricane Katrina is growing in strength.  As Caroline reads, she provides the thread that strings us through Benjamin’s fantastic journey.

At nearly three hours, the movie is too dense to fully explore here, but as Benjamin (beautifully played by Brad Pitt in a bittersweet, endearing performances) ages in reverse, we find him meeting along the way all those people who will become important to him. 

Daisy is one of them--he first meets her as a young girl, and soon falls in love with her.  Tilda Swinton appears as Elizabeth Abbott, a married, kinky socialite so fascinated by Benjamin’s metamorphosis, she soon is sleeping with him.  Another key figure is Mike (Jared Harris), a hard-drinking tugboat captain who gives Benjamin his first job and becomes one of his closest friends.

Throughout “Button,” there’s an ache to the proceedings that’s palpable, particularly as Benjamin slowly turns into the man we eventually recognize as Brad Pitt while those close to him move into the old age he already has experienced.  As he grows younger and younger (the special effects are masterful and deserving of the Academy Award nomination they will receive), he watches those closest to him slip away while he himself is fueled by a vitality they have long since forgotten. 

It’s tempting to say more, but that’s enough.  The movie is, after all, about one man’s curious case--best not to say another word about those curiosities, and how they conspire to make for one haunting film.

Grade:  A-