The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a splendidly made film based on a profoundly mistaken premise. It tells the story of a man who is old when he is born and an infant when he dies. All those around him, everyone he knows and loves, grow older in the usual way, and he passes them on the way down. As I watched the film, I became consumed by a conviction that this was simply wrong.

Let me paraphrase the oldest story I know: In the beginning, there was nothing, and then God said, "Let there be light." Everything comes after the beginning, and we all seem to share this awareness of the direction of times arrow. There is a famous line by e.e. cummings that might seem to apply to Benjamin Button: and down he forgot as up he grew. But no, it involves the process of forgetting our youth as we grow older.

We begin a movie or novel and assume it will tell a story in chronological time. Flashbacks and flash-forwards, we understand. If it moves backward through a story (Harold Pinters "Betrayal"), its scenes reflect a chronology seen out of order. If a day repeats itself (Harold Ramis "Groundhog Day"), each new day begins with the hero awakening and moving forward. If time is fractured into branching paths ("Synecdoche, New York"), it is about how we attempt to control our lives. Even time-travel stories always depend on the inexorable direction of time.

Yes, you say, but Benjamin Buttons story is a fantasy. I realize that. It can invent as much as it pleases. But the films admirers speak of how deeply they were touched, what meditations it invoked. I felt instead: Life doesnt work this way. We are an observer of our passage, and so are others. It has been proposed that one reason people marry is because they desire a witness to their lives. How could we perform that act of love if we were aging in opposite directions?

The movies premise devalues any relationship, makes futile any friendship or romance, and spits, not into the face of destiny, but backward into the maw of time. It even undermines the charm of compound interest. In the film, Benjamin (Brad Pitt) as an older man is enchanted by a younger girl (Cate Blanchett). Later in the film, when he is younger and she is older, they make love. This is presumably meant to be the emotional high point. I shuddered. No! No! What are they thinking during sex? What fantasies apply? Does he remember her as a girl? Does she picture the old man she loved?

Pitt will of course be nominated for best actor and may deserve it because of his heroic struggle in the performance. Yes, he had to undergo much makeup, create body language and perform physically to be manipulated by computers. He portrays the Ages of Man with much skill. That goes with the territory. But how did he prepare emotionally? What exercises would the Method suggest? You cant go through life waving goodbye. He is born looking like a baby with all the infirmities old age. He grows younger, until he resembles Brad Pitt, and then a younger Brad Pitt, and then -- we do not follow him all the way as he recedes into the temporal distance.

The film was directed by David Fincher, no stranger to labyrinths ("Zodiac," "Fight Club"). The screenplay is by Eric Roth, who wrote "Forrest Gump" and reprises the same approach, by having his heros condition determine his life experience. To say, however, that Roth "adapted" the original short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald would be putting it mildly. Fitzgerald wrote a comic farce, which Roth has made a forlorn elegy. Roths approach makes Benjamin the size of a baby at birth. Fitzgerald sardonically but consistently goes the other way: The child is born as an old man, and grows smaller and shorter until he is finally a bottle-fed baby. Not much is said about Benjamins mother, which is a pity, because he is 5-feet-8 at birth, and I wonder how much pushing that required.

I said the film is well-made, and so it is. The actors are the best: Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Elias Koteas, Tilda Swinton. Given the resources and talent here, quite a movie might have resulted. But its so hard to care about this story. There is no lesson to be learned. No catharsis is possible. In Fitzgeralds version, even Benjamin himself fails to comprehend his fate. Hes born as a man with a waist-length beard who can read the encyclopedia, but in childhood, plays with toys and throws temper tantrums, has to be spanked and then disappears into a wordless reverie. "Benjamin" rejects these logical consequences because, I suspect, an audience wouldnt sit still for them.

According to the oddsmakers at MovieCityNews, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is third among the top five favorites for best picture. It may very well win. It expends Oscar-worthy talents on an off-putting gimmick. I cant imagine many people wanting to see the movie twice. There was another film this year that isnt in the "top five," or listed among the front-runners at all, and its a profound consideration of the process of living and aging. Thats Charlie Kaufmans "Synecdoche, New York." It will be viewed and valued decades from now. You mark my words.

"Brad Pitt and director David Fincher prove their first two collaborative efforts werent flukes with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a mesmerizing fantasy tale based loosely on a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald. Fincher got the best out of Pitt in Fight Club and Se7en, and in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button he takes one of the handsomest actors on the planet, makes him age to 80, and gets from him the performance of his career.
Fitzgerald lifted the premise of his story from a quote attributed to Mark Twain: "Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18." The Curious Case of Benjamin Button screenwriter Eric Roth follows Fitzgerald and Twains musings, focusing on a special man who ages backwards.

The film begins with Benjamin Buttons birth in New Orleans in 1918. His mother dies in childbirth and his father (Jason Flemyng), upon seeing Benjamins ancient crinkly face, races from the house in horror with the bizarre baby cradled in his arms. He leaves the newborn on the stairs of a nursing home run by Queenie (Taraji P Henson), a practical woman with a lot of love to give.
Although the doctors believe Benjamins time on earth will be short, Benjamin proves everyone wrong. Under Queenies care, he progresses from the size of a newborn into a short, misshapen elderly man who looks to be in his 80s, which makes him fit right in with the real senior citizens who come to the nursing home to live out their final days. Benjamins accepted by the elderly folk who reside at the home, and in fact its one of the residents who introduces Benjamin to the young girl who will become the great love of his life. Daisy (played as a youngster by Elle Fanning and in later years by Cate Blanchett) is an intelligent, free-spirited girl who feels an immediate bond with Benjamin, despite what appears on the surface to be a great difference in their ages. With Daisy, Benjamin can play and act like a child - albeit a child whose body shows all the classic signs of old age.

As Benjamin grows ever-so-slowly younger, he begins to long for a life outside the walls of the nursing home. Feeling his oats, Benjamin signs on to a tugboat and discovers much about the world. Still, Daisys always on his mind. And after overcoming impossible odds, the two do reconnect at a point in their lives where his body is physically close in age to hers. Their love has endued for years, but as Benjamn continues his backwards journey through life, he remains firm in the belief that nothing lasts forever.