The Curious Case of Benjamin Button II [movies]

Walking into the theater, I didn’t see how the premise of aging a man backwards could do more than create the most artificial device to star-cross two lovers. If I had realized then that it was 3 hours long, I would have thrown a hissy fit until my family agreed to see something else on the theory that short but bad is better than long and bad.

I agree that parts of the love story seem like a given, which I often have a huge problem with in movies. You cannot just tell me that two characters are in love. You have to make me understand and believe. Here, I forgive the slightly magic-wand “and now we’re in love” gear the movie shifts into. Maybe that’s because I think telling a full life-time requires some compression. Maybe I’m a sucker for redheads (I am). But mostly, I think the love story works for me because I think of Benjamin Button not as a true character so much as the lens through which you look at everyone else who you are invited to love. And that’s where the beauty is — everything is always on its way to you or away from you.

From American Beauty to Shakespeare’s sonnets, finding beauty in the ephemeral is a well-trod theme. Perhaps that’s why Pitt’s relatively unemotional take on Button doesn’t bother me. In my view, he does a good job of staying out of staying blank enough for the audience to enjoy watching things through him, taking on his strange out-of-time condition but not much else.

So, it’s not a new idea and the mechanism (this reverse aging) is both absurd and artificial. Because he’s the lens through which you view life, Benjamin isn’t compelling for me as a character either. So, I think I enjoyed this movie so much because I fell in love with Cate Blanchett as Daisy.

If I didn’t notice that E had also reviewed this movie (posted while I was writing this), it wouldn’t occur to me that anyone wouldn’t fall in love with Daisy. She has red hair, so I’m a bit biased off the bat. But I also think there’s a lot in this love story to relate to, mirrored well by the rest of what’s in the background. Mainly, the timing is always wrong. It’s wrong (and more than slightly uncomfortable) when Button’s an old man playing under tables with a eight-year-old girl by candlelight or sneaking her out to sea. There are so many wrong times for them, that it feels so right when they “meet in the middle” — even though you would have to be a dullard not to see that coming. As a result, I understand why E and others might feel emotionally manipulative.

Even though I think the machinery of the film is visible and more than a bit artificial, I didn’t feel emotionally exploited. I felt that the film’s ability to accept its characters without excusing them, such as Daisy’s various missteps and Ben’s father’s selfishness, may have redeemed the structure for me. There were flashes of beauty and many long moments filled with the deep sadness of alienation, but both keep glimmering and then merging into each other. While that swirling journey is emotionally exhausting, BENJAMIN BUTTON may be the rare film exception where it is ok for the sum to simply be the sum of the parts.