Film of the week: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (12A)

Damon Smith • Last updated 5 Feb 2009 10:40 0 Comments

Based on a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is the frontrunner at this year's Oscars with a hefty 13 nominations.

Were it not for Slumdog Millionaire, David Fincher's visually arresting, realist fable would probably sweep the board in a similar fashion to The English Patient.

However, this technically dazzling, 166-minute epic still stands a good chance of cluttering the mantelpiece with golden statuettes.

Claudio Miranda's gorgeous cinematography shows off the majestic production design to the full, complimented by slick computer-generated effects and Alexandre Desplat's heartstring-plucking score.

Yet there is something slightly awry in this fantastical tale of a man who grows younger not older with each passing day.

Perhaps it's the unshakeable feeling that we're being emotionally manipulated, or the pacing, which seems to drag in places with Fincher's directorial flourishes.

The film opens in a New Orleans hospital room where Caroline (Julia Ormond) watches as her elderly mother Daisy (Cate Blanchett) clings to life.

To pass the time, Caroline reads from an extraordinary journal.

"My name is Benjamin Button and I was born under unusual circumstances…" confides the eponymous hero as we are transported back to 1918, when an expectant father (Jason Flemyng) races home to witness the birth of his son.

Mr Button recoils in horror at the baby swaddled in a blanket: the mewling infant looks like an old man, with ossified bones and wrinkled skin, and will apparently die within hours.

He abandons the child in the dead of night and African-American retirement home nurse Queenie (Taraji P Henson) takes pity on the abandoned babe, raises him as her own.

As Benjamin (Brad Pitt) grows older, he looks ever more youthful.

When he is eventually strong and old enough to leave the retirement home, Benjamin seeks his fortune aboard a tugboat captained by a hard-drinking Irishman (Harris) and finds romance with a beautiful ballet dancer called Daisy (Blanchett), who will pirouette her way into his heart.

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button recalls Forrest Gump, possessing the same scope and ambition as it juxtaposes an ordinary man's extraordinary escapades against a backdrop of 20th century American history.

Fincher's brio carries the picture through the occasional longueur.

He orchestrates some stunning set pieces including an explosive encounter with a World War II u-boat and dazzling sequence about the cruelty of fate and coincidence.

Digital trickery superimposes Pitt's face onto the bodies of other actors until he is able to embrace the lead role entirely.

He perfectly captures his character's inner turmoil; the fear of forging emotional bonds with Daisy or the people he cares about because "while everybody else was ageing, I was getting younger, all alone".

Supporting performances are equally strong, notably Henson's surrogate mother, who stares tenderly at Benjamin that first night and remarks, "You may be as ugly as an old pot... but you still a child of God."

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This article appeared in Reading Chronicle 05 Feb 09

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