The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

UK Release Date. 6 February 2009
Certification. 12A
Running Time. 2 hours 46 mins
Director. David Fincher
Cast. Mahershala Ali, Cate Blanchett, Jason Flemyng, Jared Harris, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton.
Rating. 61%

Review.

Loosely based on a short story written in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is to date David Fincher's sole foray into the romantic drama genre. 

Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is a man born with a rare disorder in that he ages in reverse. The film tells Button's unconventional story, from the very moment he was born in New Orleans at the end of World War I looking like an elderly man to his  eventual death. Groundbreaking effects, for the time, are responsible for Brad Pitt's transformation from an elderly baby to an infantile old man. However, the way it makes the actors appear younger, in their early 20s is most peculiar. Both Brad Pitt's and Cate Blanchett's skin is digitally altered to look eerily smooth and the undifferentiated flesh has a metallic sheen that makes the actors look more like replicants rather than younger versions of themselves. 

The screenplay is by Eric Roth, who wrote Forrest Gump, and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button follows the same approach. A sprawling odyssey where the main character's condition determines his life experience. Comparisons are inevitable. But whereas Gump possessed an endearing charm, Button is bland. Apart from his remarkable physical quirk, which unbelievably never attracts any medical or media attention, Button is very boring indeed. 

The ensemble cast endeavour to provide the film with some degree of emotional authenticity but the storyline hangs on the relationship with Daisy Fuller (Cate Blanchett). Button first meets Daisy as a young girl at the retirement home he resides at. Set aside the creepiness and paedophilic overtures, Benjamin and Daisy have an instant connection. Daisy grows up to become a brilliant ballerina and as their ages converge, Daisy and Benjamin have a brief, passionate love affair before inevitably parting. The storyline is continually interrupted by Julia Ormond, playing Daisy's grown-up daughter, reading aloud to her dying mother from Benjamin's preposterous autobiographical journal - a supercilious device that serves only the film's flashback structure.

Though far from David Fincher's best work, his typically painstaking attention to detail is apparent. Unlike other films, the director brings nothing dark to this material, and as such nothing really distinctive at all.