The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

4/10

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of the Oscar Grandees this year, and makes a lot of promises on which it does not deliver. Derived from a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald, Fincher has stretched three hours out of twenty minites of content.

Benjamin Button has an extraordinarily simple storyline; a biopic of a man who is born old and gets younger everyday. Its simplicity, therefore, is its principle downfall, as even though it lacks action, it does not make up for it in characterisation or message.

It would be easy to expect BB to have some sense of philosophical profundity, questioning our perception of time, the aging process, death and even life itself. The reality is in fact that the film, for all its technicall brilliance, lacks any coherance and most importantly of all; ambition. It is a ‘big’ film, not only for its excruciating length, but for it’s style. Apart from the initial “eww, it’s a disgusting old baby” reaction, the film is artistically spectacular (I believe Brad Pitt had to spend about 5 hours a day in make-up) and gives the impression of a spectacle.

The real disappointment of this film is that it denies its own unique selling point; I.e. the protagonist starts life old and gets younger. This has no relevance on any of the characters nor any of the plot, apart from a few casual remarks like “wow, you’re old!”. Benajmin Button starts his life in an old person’s home, then leaves to work on a tugbo at, ends up in Russia, then comes back for a brief stint in WWII and starts stalking a girl he knew from the beginning, who is trying to get on with her life.

The love-interest of the film is a girl called Daisy, who, for most of the “present day” part of the film, is old, decrepid and lying on her death-bed in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina approaches, which like all the historical references in the film, has no impact on the film proper. The rest of the ‘action’ takes place through Daisy’s estranged daughter reading Benjamin’s diary.

Skipping to the end of the film, as you will want to, there begins to be a slight payoff, though nothing near rewarding enough to make the previous two-and-a-half hours worthwhile, we see Benjamin, as an 8 year old with a dementia-ravaged brain, though again the film fails to approach coherence and instead switches to a picturesque montage to emphasise the film’s vapid ‘sieze-the-moment’ theme.

For all its artistic grandoise style, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button lacks any trace of substance, go and watch Frost/Nixon instead. That’s much better.