The Curious Case of BEnjamin Button is a film starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and is a film about a man Benjamin who lives his life in reverse, he is born old and grows young. The film is very loosely based on F.Scott Fitzgeralds novella and garnered 13 oscar nominations, it is directed by David Fincher.

Benjamin Button

The story of Benjamin is all wrapped around a clock, the film begins at the end of the first world war where a clock maker is employed to build a clock for the train station when the clock is unfurled it is found to only tick backwards, the clock maker explains that he wants to bring back those who cannot. On the stroke of the armistice, a boy is born but he appears as an old man and is rejected by his father who dumps him at the local orphanage.

Benjamin as he's called grows up looking like an old man in the company of other old people, he sits on the veranda and listens to the old men grumble, however, he is getting slowly younger as they become slowly older. Through this slow metamorphosis from old to young we are exposed to the history of the twentieth century, yet though the events are inspiring the film is oddly one paced and that pace is pedantic at best. Strange for a director who brought us Fight Club and Se7en, this film rather plods than explodes.

The film is the journely of Benjamins life played by Brad Pitt, as he gets older he gets younger, yet along the way he meets the great love of his life Daisy (Cate Blanchett) who gets older as she gets errr older. The two first meet when Benjamin looks like a seventy year old and daisy is seven, Daisy is the granddaughter of the person who runs the old people's home. They meet when Daisy is 21 but its only when Daisy breaks her leg and meets Benjamin when the pair are in their late thirties/early forties that they become lovers. You have to laud the prosthetics for this film, Brad Pitt spends the first half clad in plastic and looks like an old withered man, as Daisy gets older she is slowly transformed from a beautiful women into a handsome older women till finally an infirm old lady.

The screenplay is a little pained and a bit tepid, its written by Eric Roth who brought us Forrest Gump and has the same rather overblown need to fill the air with an overly long film. The director sometimes breaks away from this rather staid screenplay and brings us real moments of cinematography particularly the slow motion scene showing the horror of war in the trenches. The shot is again backwards and we see soldiers rising from the battlefields even though the viewer knows that moments later the soldier will be killed by shell or bullet. This backwards scene seeps into the clock opening and helps to explin the strange approach of the clockmaker.

The film is after all the attempts of the writer to make the film unwatchable just about acceptable for the viewer. The slowness of the film is its main problem but the performances of Brad and Kate light up the screen, they bring life to Benjamin and Daisy and though the screenplay gives them little to work with they maange to engage the viewer. This film works well when the director is given freedom, its a shame that this freedom wasn't allowed for longer, its main problem is the length at nearly 3 hours its just too long and a decent edit would have helped.

After watching the film, you feel that this is a film about an interesting story rather than a film telling an interesting story. In the end you leave wishing for more from less, in delivers less than the director wanted and leaves the viewer disappointed rather than uplifted.