January 4, 2009 | by Kofi Outlaw
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Review

Rating:

4 out of 5

Short Version: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a technical masterpiece that plays like a dream in motion - but it’s a dream that drags on just a bit too long.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a film adapted from the 1921 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, about a man who is born old and proceeds to age in reverse until his death. The film adaptation takes this interesting premise and stretches it out (way, way, out) into a lengthy meditation on the nature of life, death, and everything human that is crammed in between.

The meditative tone is quickly established at the onset as the film opens on a hospital room in which a dying woman asks her daughter to read to her from the diary of a man named Benjamin Button, hoping that Button’s reflections on the reverse-course of his life will give her some kind of perspective on life in her own final moments. The rest, as they say, is flashbacks. The thing is these flashbacks have the effect of making us feel as though we are moving through a kind of dream remembered. Thank superb director David Fincher for that.

The principle cast is relatively small: Brad Pitt plays the titular character (with the help of some superb F/X and makeup); Cate Blanchett plays Button’s long-sought love, Daisy; and the way underrated Taraji P. Henson plays Benjamin’s adoptive mother, Queenie. Over the course of the movie some other familiar faces (like Tilda Swinton) come and go, as Benjamin makes his way through life, one adventure at a time.