Movie Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2009)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button revolves around a central concept – what if there was a human being who aged backwards? With David Fincher of Fight Club and Zodiac fame at the helm directing, one would assume a man with his experience of directing pieces with the strange and fantastic that he would be perfectly suited to this particular project. Unfortunately, what results is a shameless and incredibly dull piece of cinema that can be adequately labeled as ‘academy award bait.’

Indeed it plays out as though it were a pastiche of a typical Oscar winning film. It has the lot; actors adopting heavy accents, a 2.5 – 3.5 hour running time with cripplingly long and tedious scenes filled with nothingness, a pointless sex scene or two (for ‘grit’) and pitiful attempts at poignant dialogue. The film prances around (much like Cate Blanchett’s dancing character) with self-congratulation, displaying a veneer of cultural significance. What lies beneath is basically nothing at all.

The film begins in New Orleans in 2005 as Hurricane Katrina encircles the city. In a similar plot device to Titanic, on her deathbed in hospital is an old woman named Daisy (Cate Blanchett). Also in the room is her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond). Daisy instructs her to read from the diary of a man named Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), and we are then shown vignettes of his life.

Benjamin is born the day after the Great War in 1918, although the significance of this is unclear. His mother dies during childbirth and his father is disgusted and shamed by the baby boy’s appearance; Benjamin is essentially an old man in a baby’s body; his skin is wrinkled, his hair is grey and he has illnesses common to the aged. Thomas Button (Jason Flemyng) abandons him leaving him on the doorstep of a woman who believes she cannot have children of her own. Benjamin is duly found and raised by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson). By the time he is six or seven, he has grown a little in stature but appears as though he were an eight year old man. He meets his future love Daisy when she is a young girl; their relationship transcends their marked difference in appearance as they are really at a similar age.

We then follow Benjamin and are shown the experiences of his life, from his first sexual encounter to his working on a tug boat and his time in World War II. These segments are intersected with scenes of Daisy on her hospital bed looking back on events and filling in the gaps in the story that she is aware of. Benjamin looks younger as each year passes as everyone around him grows older. Benjamin travels far and wide before returning to New Orleans for his love Daisy. Yawn.

The concept for the movie is based on a short story by F.Scott Fitzgerald. However, this conceit does not have substance unless it is held together by a convincing and gripping narrative, which it isn’t in this case. The next issue is a rather important one: Benjamin is a passive protagonist. He is uninteresting because he only reacts to situations around him, he is rarely the one moving the plot (if there even is one) forward and the film suffers dearly as a result. At nearly three hours, for the protagonist to offer no insight into his condition or his feeling makes the project seem even longer than it actually is, which is quite some feat.

Other issues with the film revolve around logic and missed opportunities. Firstly, no one at any point in the film thinks that there is anything that unusual with a man who has reversed the ageing process. How is it possible that no one would have deemed it a good idea to perform scientific tests on Benjamin? Everyone in the film just accepts it as a normal circumstance and this is set in the twentieth century.
But what really drags the film down isn’t its ludicrous logic or even its dual purpose as a highly potent sedative; it is its colossal and crippling lack of substance. Lines are spouted with pompous delusions that the content contained therein is profound; you know, the ‘this is the way life is’ line that seems obligatory for this sort of manipulative guff. In addition, the central relationship is neither believable nor compelling; for this film to be lauded across the land it is a surprise to find the Pitt-Blanchett pairing so devoid of chemistry.

That isn’t to say the two don’t produce good work here; Pitt was nominated for Best Actor and he turns in a decent enough performance here but his portrayal lacks the subtlety and dynamism needed to launch him to that next level. This is partly down to a role that renders him passive and partly down to a lack of exploration by him and the writers when the issue of how it feels to be old in a young body and vice versa is addressed. In short, this film doesn’t really confront the issue (the only one worth a damn) at all and what we are left with is a run-of-the-mill glorified romantic epic.

What certainly isn’t in doubt is the quality of the make-up work and the cinematography, both of which are truly exceptional and make the film worth a watch. Pitt looks the part every inch of the way and the film is beautifully lit and shot. But visuals do not necessarily make a great film and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button falls woefully short because it is ultimately a rather hollow and unsatisfying experience that amounts to little more than a desperate plea for an Oscar.

GRADE: C-