When months earlier, I saw the teaser of The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, a fable set in modern times about a man who ages backwards from old age to nascence, I foresaw a movie wrought for award ceremonies. There was Brad Pitt, staggering in his first walk as an eighty year old child, and as he reverses in age, he automatically gains a chiseled build, better eyesight and healthy hair. Images dubbed with melancholic music plays as Mr Pitt journeys through his various staple of ages, sometimes as a twenty-something on a motorbike, or as a geezer on a sailboat in midst of drizzling fire, which shows he had something to do in World War II. There was also Tilda Swinton somewhere, who very well could be a romantic interlude. Then there was Cate Blanchett, the romance of the film, who, looking somber and sacrificed would be the emotional ploy coping with Mr Pitt`s awkward condition. It would be a romantic drama with an improbable enigma that has a vacant eyed, reticent central character who would sleep walk through the movie; and it would end up being nominated. That`s as far as it would go.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons is based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who A.O. Scott of the New York Times describes as “a slender piece of whimsy, a charming fantasy”, which “as Fitzgerald unravels it, Benjamin`s story serves as the pretext for some amusing, fairly superficial observations about child rearing, undergraduate behavior and courtship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”

This almost has nothing to do with what`s onscreen. What we see is an enthusiastic adaptation on a grand production scale that is both intelligent and emotionally bankrupt. And it emits a dreaded feeling of being pretend. As Benjamin goes through his life, there is little that tickles our curiosity or motivates our willingness to care for the onscreen characters. There is a fable at the beginning about a clock that runs backwards that has a better grip on the philosophical conundrums of time running backwards than Benjamin Buttons himself.

For most of its two hours and 47 minutes running time, the film is narrated by Benjamin, who interjects accounts of his life through his dairy entries which are read by Caroline (Julia Ormond), to her mother Daisy (Cate Blanchett) a death-ridden, breathless old woman in a hospital in New Orleans, with Hurricane Katrina about to happen. Julia Ormond who as cliché would have it, is chronicling her father`s legacy. While there is mystery for Caroline about Benjamin being her father we can see it coming a mile away.

Benjamin reads through his life like a dead man, whose life has been sucked out by an out-worldly evil. The dairy entries, themselves are very much like Forrest Gump`s narrative (incidentally also written by Eric Roth). They`re just without any grappling dexterity or sense of innocence. Sort of similar to Forrest`s bringing up, Benjamin`s early life is spent on a home where the people came and went. A nursing home for the old, which too works as a parable for Benjamin, who is left there by his father (Jason Flemyng) after his mother dies giving birth to him. Benjamin, when he becomes older, travels a lot. There are certain adventures, such as his brief love affair with the married Tilda Swinton, a once swimmer who almost swam through the English Channel; and his constant job aboard a tugboat run by a swaggering Jared Harris.

As I mentioned earlier, Ms Blanchett is the film`s emotional center. As Benjamin, Ms Blanchett as Daisy too ages through the movie, first as a free spirit bohemian dancer, then as Benjamin`s companion. In contrast to Benjamin sense of affliction, Daisy is the one who suffers with more conviction. There are times when, like any normal female, she worries about looking old. Ms Blanchett does everything better than Mr Pitt. While Mr Pitt does luster his craftiness with accents and mannerisms throughout his age reflections in Benjamin Buttons, his appearance sends off a vacant energy signature. His charm is often a hindrance, especially when there is little acting involved in his role.
Clearly the director, David Fincher, has his own ideas. Mr Fincher is as aesthetically and technically savvy as anyone and his material has had the tendency of being overly long (Zodiac, his last venture was 157 minutes), something which works against Benjamin Buttons. Also, Mr Fincher has the wrong notion to turn this movie into an epic with the wrong tools. In the middle of the film, we begin to wonder if there really is more to Benjamin then just traveling and Daisy. Mr Fincher has a plausible love story embedded somewhere, which shows up at irregular intervals. He also plays the material within a very safe line, such as the scene between Daisy and a haggard-looking Benjamin (actually only a few years older than Daisy) under a dining room table which could have been designed a bit creepier. There is little dynamism in The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, and everything is pretty straightforward.
Like Memoirs of a Geisha Benjamin Buttons is a manufactured event with little emotional gravity. It is a film with just a bundle of decent scenes and a romance fairytale.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons is rated PG-13. A Paramount Release, the film stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, Jared Harris, Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng, Taraji P Henson, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali and Elias Koteas and is directed by David Fincher, written by Eric Roth, has a wonderful score by Alexander Desplat, production designs by Donald Graham Burt, has been edited by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall and cinematography by Claudio Miranda; the producers are Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Cean Chaffin.

Second opinion

There is a string of curiosity attached to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. There is the curiosity of making a 25-paged F. Scott Fitzgerald short story into a full-fledged, almost three-hour long romantic lament. Taking only the main ideas from the original story, which had a humoristic outlook at things, the film bemoans the love of our leads in the most ineffectual way possible.

Benjamin Button is a curious case of a fairytale as well, coming from writer Eric Roth whose past adventures with Forrest Gump curtains a noticeable shadow on the journey of a wrinkled old baby who has all the aliments of an aged old man goes in reverse gear to being a strapping youth, as he travel backwards to a cradle in his last hours as a baby.

Evolutions of Benjamin Button`s age may have been an astonishing premise. A life spanning through 1918 to 2003 he is unaffected by the change of the times or the sociological effect of things; even when he goes to WWII that too is a weirdly incurious experience for Benjamin who walks through life without an ounce of emotion. He also has little curiosity about his unusual condition.

Brad Pitt, as Benjamin, is hidden behind technology and make up during most of the film, is indifferent to his role and where any other actor could have brought a wonderment of physical performance, here Mr Pitt complacently breathes nothing in the personality of Benjamin Buttons leaving a huge gap of emotion out of the film.

Any valid drama is also missing during the middle act of the movie, where the romance of Cate Blanchett`s Daisy and Benjamin starts to blossom. From the looks of it, the actors exhibited little chemistry and pizzazz, which I think they left in their trailers before coming to set. Revolving around the idea of love it`s very surprising to find it so devoid of sentiment, which in itself is another curious thing.

David Fincher direction in this specific genre shows a sufficient change in storytelling since all his past films have been intelligent thrillers. Here though, he maintains his usual pace, and his dynamism is only evident at the last part of the film. The rest is impersonal. A washed out result of an over dose of Forrest Gump - curious indeed. — Farheen Jawaid