STORY STUDY - CRITERION WEEK - 476. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Growing old is a natural part of life; growing young as your life goes by… hardly any difference. Sure, you’re able to continue walking, but as this month’s Criterion Week subject, even the mind is still vulnerable.

Directed by David Fincher, screenplay by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, and based on the short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tells the life story of the title character, Benjamin Button, who was born on the night of the end of WWI (1918). Benjamin is born a baby, but he looks and has the physical aspects of an elderly man.

As time goes by, as the people around him grow older, he becomes younger. The film explores Benjamin’s life as a soldier in World War II, but is essentially a love story between him and his childhood friend, Daisy Fuller, a ballerina.

The story is told in flashback by an elderly Daisy, who is telling the story of Benjamin Button to her daughter, Caroline, on her deathbed, via her diary, in New Orleans, Louisiana in August 2005 as Hurricane Katrina approaches.

The film has a unique spin of a biopic in that our main characters is de-aging, but everyone in his life is going through their natural course of life, i.e. growing old and dying, despite the fact that Benjamin will die as well when he becomes old/young enough. I can’t even say that’s a spoiler because… well… I’m pretty sure everyone knows in the end, people die.

I want to make this clear: despite the fantastical character, this is not a fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural version of Earth. It’s just the story of this man’s life, and the people he encounters.

Once again, David Fincher shows that he is a visual director. The special/visual effects team that makes Brad Pitt look the way he does as Benjamin at any point in life is amazing, but Fincher still proves he knows how to frame his shots for his first romance film.

Depending on whether you think this simple romance story makes this film as something special is all up to you. After all, if I was to say the film was about a boy who was abandoned by his father for looking different, adopted by a workers of a nursing home, and he grows up loving her childhood friend, and in the middle of it, he joins the war, it sounds really unfocused.

Is it a war film? No, the war segments lasts like 30 minutes, so in effect, it doesn’t add or change the course of the film.

I’d say this is a romance tragedy. Benjamin and Daisy do end up together, and do have a child, but he abandons them thinking they wouldn’t have a normal life with him de-aging and all.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a film I wanted to see the moment I saw the trailer. It’s also the first film I’ve seen that was directed by David Fincher, the second being The Social Network, so I can definitely say I was surprised of his thriller films, the ones he is more well-known for. What also shocked me was the material that it was based on: a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby.

This is a film that explores the importance of the people around you, and whether you grow old or young, life still goes by, so you better make decisions that you won’t regret in the end.