The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) - by Joan de Newyark

It starts with a daughter in a hospital room watching the wind, a young death, and a blind father missing his son. The blind father builds a clock that is his desire to allow his son and all fallen soldiers to stand again, to live the lives they never got to live, to reverse time.  The clock goes up and Benjamin button is born on the day WWI ends. He is terribly ugly and wrinkled and how the hell is that Brad Pitt?!

The cinematography is breathtaking, it pulses like a dream, it flickers like an old film, it is illuminated like slides of portraits by Loretta Lux and Jeff Wall, the magical realism is electric, its believable, its lovable, its the Curious Case of Benjamin Button based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I cried, I wanted to meet someone in the middle, fall in love, I missed my mom (and she was in the theatre with me), I remembered friends that have died and the things I have learned from people I didn't even know. And you will too.  You will understand when he says he hears the house breathe- the feeling in the middle of night when everyone you love is safely in bed and you leave to show a friend the river at dawn.  When he returns home after years of being away and everything is the same you feel a small pain.  The house smells the same, looks the same, the spoons are still in the same place- the only thing that keeps changing every time you come back is you.  Its moments like this why I loved this film.  And if you can read minds then I am totally that annoying girl leaving the theatre in the end thinking if I were to make a movie it would be similar to this.

The film is almost 3 hours- it does feel like Forrest Gump in a way that follows the course of a whole life and all of the stories of Benjamin's travels. The supporting characters come and go through a lifetime.  One of my favorite supporting characters is an old man that lives in the nursing home Benjamin grows up in- the man reminds Benjamin every time he sees him that he has been struck by lighting 7 times- every time he was just minding his business and was struck by lightning.  This goes on for years- the man grows older and Benjamin grows younger. "Some people are get struck by lightening, some people are artists, some are mothers, some dance, some people know buttons..."

Yes, the narrative is being told through the all too typical daughter reading a journal on the side of her mom's death bed (the daughter in the beginning watching the wind).  You cant see wind- is this symbolic?  And did I mention there is a hurricane approaching? No one knows to stay or go- if the hurricane will hit land or avoid the hospital all together. No one knows to stay or go- to die or stay, to love or leave, to grow old or grow young, to go backwards or forwards or even if they are different.  In the end this is hurricane Katrina- the basements flood, the daughter runs out of the hospital room to see what is happening and so does the dying mother, gasp- die?

The dying mother was once beautiful.  Benjamin lays on a mattress on the floor of their first house with the love of his life- he fell in love with her at first sight when he was 10 but looked 80.  She has shocking red hair and blue eyes. They look at themselves in the mirror they are in their 40's- they have met in the middle and finally appear to be the same age.  They are happy- the time lapse of them fucking and painting the walls makes me happy.  Nothing lasts forever- except some things.  You watch Benjamin fall in love, hold love and lose love. It is sad and I hate it as much as I hate real life love- I love it.  The costume director should get a gold medal because Cate Blanchett's clothes are everything you would want the love of your life to wear. 

And of course in the peak of his hotness they have to put Benjamin on a motorcycle, yes ladies we are suckers not just for a Brad Pitt digitized to look the way he did 10 years ago but also for motorcycles and movie producers know that.  Benjamin has written his love postcards from every place he has ever been as he travels on a tug boat and later as he feels more like an outsider as he grows younger physically.  He misses his family, his daughter and wants to be able to be there to teach her all the things anyone would cry over when thinking about a dad that maybe wasn't there or was disappointing in any way. i think the entire theatre was crying. He has to go, but couldn't he kiss her goodbye?

The end is the kicker- or was it the beginning?  Did your heart break when she walked into your life or walked away? Are we to remember anyone?  Is anyone meant to protect us, to hold us, to teach us, to befriend us?  What remains through time?  Everyone ends up in diapers.  Go see this movie now.  I will go with you even if we have never met. Yet.

xoxo,

Joan de Newyark