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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Elias Koteas, Elle Fanning, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng Director: David Fincher Release Date: December 25th, 2008 Release Date: 6th February, 2009 Studio: Paramount Pictures Synopsis: I was born under unusual circumstances. And so begins The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: a man, like any of us, who is unable to stop time. We follow his story, set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the 21st century, following his journey that is as unusual as any mans life can be. A grand tale of a not-so-ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.

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Movie Trailers

Buy Now on DVD & Blu-ray The Curious Case of Benjamin Button DVD (Single-Disc Edition) Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett Rating: PG-13 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Blu-ray] Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett Rating: PG-13 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button DVD (Two-Disc Special Edition) Rating: PG-13 More DVD & Blu-ray

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Movie Links

Official ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ Movie Website
‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ on IMDb

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About the Movie

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 American fantasy drama film, based on the 1921 short story of the same name written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film was directed by David Fincher, written by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, and stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The film was released in the United States on December 25, 2008.

The film received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Pitt, and Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson. It won three Oscars for Art Direction, Makeup, and Visual Effects.

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Movie Reviews

Movie Review by Kelsey Zukowski

Score – Grade: B

The Curious Case of Benjamin is the film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story. It mostly takes the basic plot of a man being born old and growing young. There are many differences between the two including coming out as a wrinkled infant with old features instead of being born full grown. Writer, Eric Roth, and director, David Fincher, create their own story around the initial plot though. In many respects they would have to in order to turn a short story in to a 2 hour and 46 minute feature.

Benjamin’s (Pitt) mother died giving birth to him. The old characteristic of him as a new born baby looked like deformities. His father, grieving over the death of his wife, only saw a monster when he looked at Benjamin. He panicked and left him on someone’s doorstep. Queenie ( Henson) finds him there. She knows that because of the way he looks others will reject him. She takes care of him and becomes his mother. She was told that he isn’t expected to live very much longer since he has many diseases such as arthritis. Still, he continues to outlive his expectancy. Growing up with Queenie in the old folks home, Benjamin doesn’t really notice that he is that different since he looks similar to the other people there. Over the years he begins to look slightly younger very slowly. One day he meets Daisy (Elle Fanning). Despite their age, they connect with another from the very first glance. Daisy can tell that there is something very different about Benjamin and that there is a youthful spirit inside of him.

When Benjamin is 17 he leaves his home. He meets a number of people along the way who shape his life, particularly with his work on a tug boat. He has many experiences with the workers there, including drinking, going to a brothel, and soon after fighting in the war as a navy force. While Benjamin was gone Daisy (Blanchett) went to a ballet academy in New York City and is now a successful ballet dancer. When the two are reunited in their home of New Orleans a romance is added to their lifelong friendship. However, with one rejection it goes as a lost opportunity. The two don’t get this chance again until Daisy injures herself and comes back home to Benjamin who is there for her to see her get better. At this point they are closer in age than they have ever been before and just as in love as ever, it just feels right now. The two spend every moment together. Their relationship becomes problematic when Daisy gets pregnant.

Read the Full ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ Movie Review at FilmArcade.net

Movie Review by Todd Murphy

Rating – 8/10

A rich, heart-warming film that takes the unusual premise of a man growing younger and using it to provide a number of life lessons about making the most of what you have been given.

Director David Fincher has made some very rich and complex films in his career, many exploring the darker sides of humanity. With “Curious Case”, he still retains his unique style but manages to fuse it with a more heart-warming feel without losing touch with reality which he could easily have done given the quirky premise of a man born old who grows younger. Many great themes of life, love and death are covered, particularly the ideas of destiny, fate and choice.

Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is abandoned at birth by his father who thinks he is a monster. He is taken in by a loving black woman who raises him in her old person’s home who are there to live out their few remaining years. As Benjamin grows, he gains a unique perspective on life; he learns quickly about the end of life and what it means to not waste any moments you have been given. Coupled with his unusual condition which makes him an outcast, Benjamin develops in to a gentle, non-judgmental character you cannot help but love.

This is no more demonstrated in his relationship with Daisy (Cate Blanchett) whom he meets early in his life and leads to a rocky friendship to an eventual loving relationship. Fate continues to bring them together, and when their respective ages become closer, they develop a relationship which is full of highs, but is doomed to end early as their age gap begins to widen again.

One brilliantly constructed scene involves a car accident involving Daisy. Benjamin re-constructs the incident in his mind, pointing out a number of very minor events, and if even one of these minor events had not occurred, she would not have been on the street at the time she was involved in the accident. In many ways, this scene envelopes the finer themes of fate that run throughout this film and how life can take things away from you in a single moment, a lesson which works for all of us in that we should never take our lives for granted.

Both Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are perfect in their respective roles. Pitt delivers a very understated performance that is instantly loveable given Benjamin’s gentle persona. Blanchett creates a complicated girl who has a very turbulent early life but becomes content and grounded when she becomes more intimately involved with Benjamin.

The images are absolutely glorious. David Fincher is renowned for creating vivid, and carefully constructed shots and he does not disappoint in this movie, with each picture being a movie in itself.

The film feels a little long-winded. At over two and a half hours, the film does have a slow pace which could have been improved with some editing. The film is not boring, but there were some moments where I found myself shifting in my seat, more because of the running time than the story.

The scenes involving Daisy as a dying woman in the hospital with her daughter reading Benjamin’s diary do not always fit naturally in to the Benjamin’s life story, and the moment where her daughter realises that Benjamin is her real father does not seem fair to the character when it happens.

In many ways, “Curious Case” has a lot in common with “Forrest Gump”, but unlike the latter film, “Curious Case” does not have the same energy or pace to make it stand out as a masterpiece. Having made these points however, David Fincher has done a fabulous job with this film and it is worth seeing at the cinema.

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Movie Review by Marty Meltz

Quality – 6 out of 10

Needs editing. Badly.

Nationally, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is getting a score, on the basis of 100 to 0, scores of 100 down to 25, “A timeless masterpiece” to “Unbearably excruciating.” I tend toward the latter.

Director David Fincher overindulges himself. In this understandably long, long story, he nonetheless continuously loses a sense of priority as to which scenes need longer times. As a result, so, so many scenes dwell on the screen way beyond their point. Agonizingly long deliberation does not equate to classic quality. Truth be told, some sequences have really little excuse to exist at all other than their pacing quality.

And the film’s basic hook — the protagonist’s growing younger while others in his life grow older — is underutilized. Indeed, the inherent drama in this particular phenomenon is hardly developed at all. So what we have here is a prolonged exercise in tiresome melodrama which not only wears out its welcome early on but, you may well sense, is hardly welcome in the first place. At an emotionally even keel, with hardly a moment of surge or verve, you’re not likely to be drawn into this.

As to the much-vaunted Brad Pitt performance? Frankly, I see him adding virtually nothing in any scene’s energy requirements. He’s just there, the role asking little of him. From a make-up and effects standpoint, however, the handling of the reverse-aging process is, admittedly, absolutely startling.

Going for the film is its superb production design, a thoroughly superior visual quality attended to in every moment in every frame which does help to keep you awake and interested in the settings and varying times.

Based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald 1921 novel. The novel, about a man born old but growing younger and younger with the years, began its tale in 1860. The film, instead, begins its flashback story in 1918.

To lead off, in a modern hospital room, aging and fading Daisy (Cate Blanchett) asks her 40-something daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) to read from her beloved late friend’s diary. That was Benjamin Button, born of that time, the World War I armistice.

So to flashback: Benjamin is raised by a black orderly at a New Orleans rest home. Fact is, the child has been born with all the appearances and physical frailties of a man in his eighties — bald, bad hearing, cataracts and wheelchair bound.

At 12, now looking more like 70, Benjamin meets a patient’s pretty granddaughter. And this is Daisy. She will be now here, now there, in and out over his lifetime. He now realizes that he is getting younger all the time.

A very devoted and gentle stranger has entered his life. Unbeknownst to him, he’s his father. Yet he too will fade in and out even as Benjamin learns of the outside world, this to include the ways of lust. Soon he will join the boozy trans-Atlantic tugboat captain Mike (Jared Harris) and will go to sea where, during World War II, he will experience an encounter with a German U-boat that has just sunk a troop transport.

A romantic interest has arisen, this in Murmansk, Russia with the refined Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton). He will learn love.

After the war, back in New Orleans, Benjamin rejoins Daisy. She is much older. He is much younger. She is a dancer, very open with her sexuality, a bit much for him. And soon his father dies and leaves him his button factory and vast estate.

Benjamin now joins Daisy in New York where she ballet dances in “Carousel.” Then on to Paris. And tragedy will strike her.

The torpedoed ship sequence is overly extended, with dubious value in the first place. The romance involvement is curiously understated and without a catchy interaction. Really bothersome is that the film hardly even tries to form a personality of its own.

Read More Movie Reviews at Marty at the Movies

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'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' Stars

Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, David Fincher, Elias Koteas, Elle Fanning, Jason Flemyng, Julia Ormond, Tilda Swinton