My offical review of the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
These are my thoughts on this film, without giving away any of the details of the movie.
First of all, this movie is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which he published in a series of installments in a magazine, back in the year 1921. This short story can be read here:
The Original Short Story
The short stoy is interesting in its own right, and show the "seed" of ideas that he had, perhaps intending to make it into a full-length novel, but he never did. This movie does that for him, and I think he would have approved of the result.
The story in this film was quite unique. I've never seen a movie, or read a story, in which the character ages backwards. At first, this detail was a bit distracting. I had to choose to accept this odd detail before I was able to focus on the story. At first I had a bit of a hard time getting past this detail: the story follows a baby that is born "old" and grows into an adult that ages into a child. But I eventually accepted this premise and I enjoyed thinking about the odd things that would happen with a small child that looks like an old man, but gradually starts looking younger in his old age.
The movie begins during World War I and ends in the year 2005, so it covers a long span of time, sort of like the film "Atonement". This is why the film is almost 3 hours long, and several characters appear during the story and then disappear, to the point where I forgot about some of them by the time the movie ended! But I didn't mind the length of the film, since a long life needs a long time to tell the story. The film didn't feel as long as it really was.
The movie takes place in several parts of the world, starting in America - in Louisiana, then in New York - then in Russia, Paris, and out in the Atlantic ocean during the war. The main plot-shift takes place in Paris, which is memorable and told in a creative way. I liked how several disconnected details in this part of the story in Paris all suddenly converge into one dramatic climax.
Brad Pitt has 2 love-interests in the story. The first one is played by the British actress Tilda Swinton, whom I've always thought looks both evil and attractive at the same time. Sort of like the character of Bree in "Desperate Housewives":
Tilda Swinton
I think I see her as evil because she played the role of the White Witch in the first "Narnia" movie. I liked her in this role. Some evil women can be attractively evil I suppose...!
His other love-interest is played by Cate Blanchett. The 3 of these people are very nice to look at, and is probably the main reason people are seeing this film. There is quite a bit of drama and emotion and romance between these characters, in different periods of his life, and I thought it was very well-done.
I'm not sure if Brad Pitt will win the best-actor Oscar for this film. He doesn't really act in this film, but instead sort of walks through the story without changing his expression much. Most of the drama is provided by his surroundings and the women in his life, with Brad Pitt serving as a sort of stable center around which drama orbits. Perhaps this is how most men and women interact anyways...!
The movie has an obvious theme, which is repeated several times throughout the movie: nothing lasts. You only live once, and you never know what life will give you, and after a while it's all over. Don't worry about the future too much, but accept life while you have it to live. Brad Pitt's character says this several times because he knows he can't grow old with his partner in the normal way, so he has to focus on the present time in his life and be happy. But, as expected, the story becomes sad in the end because eventually his present time doesn't last and he has to deal with the effects of his "growing young" and his life coming to an end. The movie is sad in the end, but Michelle liked it because she cried. If a woman cries in a movie, this is usually a good sign that she liked it...!
The movie is also pretty impressive to watch to see Brad Pitt get younger. Watching him look like his younger self is very dramatic. In real life, Brad Pitt is about a year older than I am, but in the film you see him look exactly the way he did when he was in his 20's and as a teenager. It's almost like they used his older movies to show his younger self. But it's all done with makeup, not with computer-effects, and it's very believable. The film deserves an award for this reason alone.
So I give the movie almost 4 stars out of 5. It was very good, but I guess I don't give it a full 5 stars because I wasn't sure what the point of the story was, beyond stressing the fact that nothing lasts. The story gave us the opportunity to look at good-looking actors and feel emotional with them. This is usually a good enough reason to see a movie, but since the story was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald I was probably expecting something with a bit more depth, or layers, of meaning behind the story, as with his other novels. Perhaps there were more layers of meaning, and I just missed them.