The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is definitely a film you need to watch multiple times. Depending on our frame of mind, we can appreciate the individual components, Fitzgerald's theme, the lavish acting of Pitt and Blanchett, or Tilda Swinton's perfect little performance, who manages to steal a good half of the film for herself. I have a soft spot for the atmosphere of pre-war New Orleans and I'm glad Fincher paid homage to it in this way. (03/21/2013)

Unlike Forrest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not a celebration of an exceptional "fool", but much more an ad absurdum led by a metaphor for the ruthlessness of passing time, which unites and divides and does not take hostages... We do not find herein a fundamental part of a great history that the heroes would, like Švejk, circumnavigate in a cocoon of wise madness; Benjamin's journey is more pensive, simpler, and not as epic. In this respect, it is much more like Burton's Big Fish - it is not a metaphor for great society, but a metaphor for one life, one time, into which the times of the other characters are freely intertwined. The uniqueness of everyday life, the search for ideal balance, the fateful chaining of various timelines and the extraordinarily conciliatory picture of old age, is all loosely chained around the picture of a clock that goes backwards. Fincher tells a fairy tale in which the tones of harmony do not dominate, but rather the tones of melancholy and a kind of conciliatory realization that everything passes away, regardless of the direction in which time passes. Finiteness is immutable. Perhaps at first I was missing some more individuality, although the sense for detail, the wonderfully pastel visual and the fantastic pace of the storytelling are admirable. But that is not what this is about. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a Hollywood film, it has the philosophy of Hollywood (it does not offend), and has Hollywood emotions (it does not offend). The sentiment is balanced by the absence of an epic idyll. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a film about mortality, not immortality... That's why it is able do something more than an ordinary love story – evoke a feeling of deep participation. The film succeeded from my perspective, even though its wisdom is a bit typically “old". (02/15/2009)

While the movie is only about him and not them, I have no major objections. But after that I have several. I’d sum it up with a sad sigh, that although the creators decided to use nothing else from Fitzgerald’s story other than the title (which, on the one hand, is not surprising), and instead blatantly (but unadmittedly) ripped off Greer’s Confessions of Max Tivoli, they could at least have stuck to it in their portrayal of Max and Alice’s relationship. Oops, sorry, I meant Benjamin and Daisy’s relationship, of course. This bittersweet, albeit tasteful lemonade could not equate to Greer’s condensed broth filled with melancholy and sadness. I know, I know, comparing a book to a movie is unfair, but this time it was Roth who started it. If he has to "borrow" ideas elsewhere, he should at least do it with some style. Not in this haphazard way, substituting the best part with a cold romance we’ve seen a hundred times before. ♫ OST score: 3/5 (03/02/2009)

After a second screening, I was able to fully appreciate this moving meditation on life and death. It just confirmed for me the well-known truth that great films are to be enjoyed in the darkness of the cinema, with quality sound and image, and that it is for films like this that the big screens are made. The film flew by so that the 2 and a half hours felt like half an hour, I lost track of time and enjoyed the hypnotically captivating symbiosis of image and music. Then the emotions surfaced naturally, I would have set a lot of the thoughts expressed there in stone, and I guess it's true that the more you have experienced and the more you realize the transience of time, the more the film speaks to you internally (my mother was bawling like a baby). Cinema magic. Thanks, David. (02/10/2009)

This film is an honest piece of craftsmanship, into which Fincher has put a lot of his unmistakable ideas, and yet they don't really attract attention and thus leave enough room for the story. The story itself could actually be told in a moment. It’s not that I was bored - the director can tell a story engagingly enough for that, but this is his first film that completely missed the mark for me emotionally. Maybe that’s because of the fact that Cate Blanchett just doesn't "fit" in the film for me and she flutters a bit behind the excellent Pitt, and also because of the lengthy runtime, which is just too long given the amount of plot. Some people obviously think that a perfect style can carry a film. I give it a weaker four stars. (01/03/2009)