The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an imaginative epic about love and loss. Its visuals and storyline is outstanding and although it's just shy of 3 hours long, the time flies - a perfectly executed movie!

Benjamin's mother dies in child birth and appalled by his withered appearance, his father abandons him at an old person's nursing home. Queenie, a black woman, who looks after the elderly at the care home, takes Benjamin in and raises him as her own. Benjamin fits right-in with the elderly as he looks just like them; he even makes a new friend named Daisy who is the grandchild of one of the residents. The two remain friends throughout their lives and their paths always rejoin along the way.

Benjamin continues to grow younger and stronger, even getting a job on a tug boat. Eventually Benjamin leaves the retirement home with a hunger for life and goes off to experience the world and embrace life. This eventually leads him back to Daisy and the pair's relationship develops into an epic romance, but one that is ill-fated from the start, as Daisy is growing old as Benjamin is turning into a child.

This beautifully rich film is a thought-provoking exploration of true love, growing old and making the most of what life throws at you. Told from Daisy's death bed, the film is skilfully put together, well acted by Brad and Cate and visually believable - it's a testament to Fincher's talent as a director!

The Curious case of Benjamin Button is a unique and fascinating modern fairytale which marks a dramatic shift in genre for director David Fincher who has been previously made some of the best thriller films that have redefined the genre itself, such as, "se7en", "fight club" and "zodiac". The romantic storyline may be almost opposite to Fincher's usual craft in story telling but just like most of his films it is how he executes these stories that separate his movies from most others. For this film Fincher has opted for a realistic and cerebral direction that plays out subtly to its audience, hear he wants us as an audience to see in to the life of Benjamin Button as if we were actually there with him ourselves. Fincher never tries to take us out of the movie and joke with us like he has done before in "fight club". The acting and visual FX take a similar approach as the direction. Some people complain that the acting wasn't "Oscar worthy". I couldn't disagree more. Many people commonly believe that to display good acting the actor must shout loudly during an emotional scene and cry buckets of tears, but hear all the actors focus on characterization to help sell these characters in these sometimes unbelievable scenarios. The biggest compliment that can be given to the special FX is that you will not notice them. Too often nowadays CGI is just used as a gimmick, not so in The curious case of Benjamin Button where it is used only when essential and for the main purpose CGI was created in the first place; to move the story forward. All of these subtle aspects of the production help make the romance between Daisy and Benjamin all the more believable.
I would thoroughly recommend this movie for any who appreciates a well told story and brilliant film making in general, by far one of the best, if not the best movie of 2008 or for that matter the best movie I have seen in a while.