The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2008
**
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas, Tilda Swinton
Benjamin Button is born as an old man and he grows progressively younger. On his day of birth in 1918, he is abandoned on the steps of a New Orleans nursing home, where he later meets a bubbly girl named Daisy. Will these reversely aging souls ever be able to have a life together? In theory, Eric Roth adapted F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 short story, but in practice he has rehashed his own Forrest Gump screenplay. Benjamin is another simple Southerner who sleepwalks through the events of the 20th century. The hero ages backwards, and that's all there is to him. He does nothing with his life but still gets rich, which enables him to wallow in existential angst full-time. Brad Pitt's wooden (and in the latter scenes plastic) performance doesn't make the character any more interesting. The story could try and say something about life, love, and the passage of time, but it's happy being a conventional and massively overlong romantic melodrama with an unusual protagonist. The film is visually stunning, however, and it deservedly won Academy Awards for best art direction, makeup, and visual effects.
