Deve’s Blog

Finally I can get some rest from work, as the part of the project that completely drained us for the last 3 months is over, so I managed to disconnect the brain for a bit: first on Thursday night, dining with colleagues from Accenture Orientation to celebrate (why?!) 18 months of work (and the switch to open-ended job contract), and then on Friday night, going to the movies. Chosen flick: the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, that looked interesting to me since I saw the first trailers, as it reminded me of the beautiful “La Neve se ne Frega” novel by Ligabue.
And you can really tell we’ve got some respite from work ’cause I can even find the time and the will to write a short review…

The movie tells about Benjamin’s Button life, from his birth to his death; a very particular life, though, as Benjamin Button was born… old. His mother died while giving birth to him, his father abandoned him in front of a hospice for the elderly, where he gets taken care of by his foster mother Queenie, despite his difference. Benjamin, indeed, had the size and the mind of a newborn, but the body of an old man, almost blind, arthritic and apparently near death.

Still, Benjamin survives, heals, slowly grows until he can easily blend in with the other guests of the hospice, because of his 80 year-old body: but, besides beginning to speak, walk and learn, as the years go by he keeps rejuvenating inexplicably.
The whole movie covers this “reverse life” step by step, in a long flashback based on the protagonist’s diary, from the first experiences outside the hospice/home up to the trips all over the world; the core of it all are the encounters with Daisy, Benjamin’s (im)possible love that is finally fulfilled when the two “meet halfway through” their lives… but still going in different directions.

2 hours and 40 minutes of movie that still feel light and involving, by cleverly jumping from a delicate humour (”Have I ever told you that I’ve been struck by lightning seven times?”) to estranging and bitter situations. The recurring theme, besides the aforementioned love, inevitably tormented by Benjamin’s “diversity”, is that of death, which the main character gets to know since the first years of his existence. For this reason too (just to provide a comparison with a similar story), the movie turns out to be overall sadder than the Ligabue’s novel I mentioned before, where death was almost absent and where the “rejuvenating condition” affected all the human beings rather than just one, so it wasn’t an obstacle to the love of the protagonists. In my opinion, though, death in the movie is presented as an integral and natural part of life, as Benjamin soon learns at the hospice; and I thought the end of Benjamin himself was serene and strangely normal, despite being obviously unnatural because of his rejuvenation; maybe that’s why I left the cinema with just a bit of melancholy.

On the spot I really liked the movie for the way it carries you along without running, for the way it makes you smile and then sadden, for the way it makes you think. I also have to mention the makeup and the amazing special effects (and indeed the movie got the Oscar for those two categories), starting from the “old” Brad Pitt and getting to his impressive rejuvenation and Cate Blanchett’s aging (by the way she’s really splendid in her 20’s-30’s sequences).
In retrospect, after thinking about it and reading, as usual, some comments and reviews, I lowered the score a little bit (but not much). Benjamin seems to live most of his experiences, even the worse ones, with a mix of detachment and acceptance/resignation which makes it a bit harder for the audience to empathize with him. Furthermore the scenes that are set in the present, with Daisy and her daughter reading the diary, feel a bit disconnected and in my opinion don’t add much to the story. Finally, there are some very hollywood-like and Forrest-Gump-like clichés (the hummingbird above all) which leave the movie open to some criticism about it being shallow.

In my opinion, all of this doesn’t detract from the movie. Maybe I haven’t said everything, but I’ll stop here now. A suggested movie (as long as you can keep up with this genre for almost 3 hours…).

Vote: 7/8