Movie Review: 'Benjamin Button' a remarkable film

A film of emotional depth, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," comes as something of a surprise - albeit a pleasant one - from David Fincher, the director of "Se7en," Zodiac" and "Fight Club."

Filled with melancholy and steeped in an aura of loss and old-fashioned morality, this film takes the core of its source material, a forgotten F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, and runs with it.

The film tells the fable-like premise of a baby born into this world as an old man - a newborn body with all of the ailments one would expect from an 80-year-old

- who proceeds to age in reverse, becoming younger as the years pass everyone else by until he ends his life in infancy.

A decidedly difficult film to classify, the picture shares some elements with "Forrest Gump," another history spanning film focusing on an affable protagonist who winds his way through 20th century America and, with screenwriting credit going to Eric Roth, who also penned "Gump", it's no wonder.

But it's with these basic plot devices that the comparison ends. "Benjamin Button" finds the strength to tell its tale on its own terms, making certain to avoid the ample opportunities such a story provides to descend into over-sentimentality; in the process transforming a gimmick of a film into an almost epic tale that allows the audience to contemplate the wonders of life.

The framing device for the story revolves around Daisy (Cate Blanchett), an old woman dying in a New Orleans hospital who gives her daughter (Julia Ormond) a memoir to read aloud to her in her final moments. The author is, of course, Benjamin (Brad Pitt), who was born on V-E day back in 1918.

As he writes it, he was "born under unusual circumstances." He's a newborn baby with all of the failings of a man in his 80s, complete with poor eyesight, bad hearing and wrinkled flesh.

After his mother dies giving birth, Benjamin's father abandons him. Discovered by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a maternal young black woman who, suitably enough, runs an old-age home, Benjamin is taken in and raised in a place where his condition can go mostly unnoticed.

It is here that Benjamin grows up, living among the ranks of those who the rest of the world ignores or has forgotten. And it is here that Benjamin first meets Daisy as a young girl. As she spends time there visiting an elderly relative, she encounters Benjamin and recognizes a kindred youthful spirit behind his deceivingly old visage. When he confides to her that he isn't as old as he seems, a friendship is forged that, over time, evolves into a deep and passionate love.

It's that love, which is both boundless and tragic in its inability to be expressed, as Daisy and Benjamin travel through life in two different directions which truly drives the remainder of the film.

As Benjamin's body gets younger, he heads out into the world to experience life in all of its wonder. It's in this part of the story that the film's supporting cast is really allowed to shine. We meet the always drunk tugboat captain Mike (Jared Harris), chewing on his lines with a delicious over-the-top zeal, who takes young Benjamin out to sea and is the true father figure in his life.

In one of the most engaging vignettes of the film, Benjamin meets and has an affair with Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), the sophisticated wife of a British diplomat, whom he meets nightly in a hotel lobby in Murmansk. It's here, in the frigid cold of Russia, that Benjamin has his first experience with love, desire and suddenness of loss. It's a marvelously small moment in a very grand film and Swinton gives a gracefully understated performance as a woman who rediscovers her passion for life.

Full of philosophic and romantic posturing, the success of "Benjamin Button" ultimately rests on the concept that Benjamin and Daisy will get together at the right time, and the audience will not be disappointed when they do. By the time their love is allowed to be realized, Brad Pitt at the height of his matinee idol good looks and Blanchett at the peak of her womanhood, everyone involved is more than ready. Their finally requited love is all the more poignant, passionate and heart breaking, for both know this moment cannot last. They will both continue to age in opposite directions and their acceptance of this eventual loss in order to express their love for one another is both conscious and necessary. It's one of the most melancholy, but wholly genuine, meditations about love and the ever changing nature of life you'll ever experience on film.

The acting is remarkable across the board and Pitt gives his best performance to date. Blancett is captivating as Daisy and brings a depth to what could have been a one-note role with a lesser actress. The special effects are also top-notch, seamlessly enhancing the film rather than being the distraction that they so often are.

A remarkable, if flawed - at a running time of two hours and 40 minutes, it's about 20 minutes too long - film that must be reflected on once the viewing is completed in order to be fully appreciated, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" succeeds in doing what so many Oscar candidate pictures aspire to and fail. It inspires without overstating, it enlightens without being pretentious and, perhaps most impressively, it has something important to say about life, about birth and death, and most of all, about love.

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Brad Johnson is a freelance writer living in Annapolis.