Reflections from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

 

"We were meant to lose people. How else would we know how important they are to us?"..

At first I was interested in this movie when I first find out about it, then >( i was wet blanketed by my colleague saying that the movie is really bad.. then he physco me to go watch Valkyrie and I did. *Yawn*.. Normal lah! Valkyrie, the suspense and climax doesn't impress me much. 2 Days ago, I went to watch the CCBB (Curios Case of Benjamin Button). So long to type juz abbreviate it only lah. This movie really gave me a good impression. Was a lil moody after the movie, was pondering about life. I always had this concept that I should live and make choices in life based on thoughts like "would I look back and regret it when I'm old?". So I don't want to regret nor can I avoid feeling regret in future. Afterall, we're human and we make unavoidable mistakes even though we try our best. You can't see urself, u're not 24 hours in front of a mirror, sometimes u just do things and you hurt another person out of your knowing.

"Benjamin : I was thinking how nothing last, and what a shame that is."

U see, one day, sooner or later we'll become old and old is just not old, you see an old person around everyday, but have you ever thought of how they felt, aren't you even curious wanting to ponder how does ur mindset and thoughts goes when u're

old. The greatest battle is learning to accept the end of your life. When everything you ever knew will just dissapear from ur sight, and after u left for the other world, impression and ur existence will slowly fade over time in the thoughts of people. Sad isn't it. Vibrations of memory and feeling has it's decaying time as well. We're all taking it for granted, we're living life everyday thinking as if we would live forever. It is the biggest lie in life. Then only when you become old, u feel regret and unsatisfied. Like "it could have been" or "if only". Very sad words to say. I mean..Why waste it, every moment of seconds itself, is an opportunity life gives you. You can choose to waste it, throw it away or embrace it. Some people would expect nothing out of life, but I would say to them that they deserve much more than what they are. To live a life of purpose is to live a complete and perfect life. Who wants to feel useless. Every individual is an important person itself, and if I'm God, I would care for every single person on earth like we both exists only. So keep encouraging yourself.

"Daisy : Some thing lasts."

Benjamin Button is a fictional character which born an old man and die as a baby. In another word, a person living against time. How would you feel to see everyone getting older and you're getting younger. It's a total change of experience to ponder about.It's a long movie, 2 hours plus i guess.. sit until backside also pain. But worth it, i like the pace and mood of it. Reminds me of movie like Meet Joe Black. =)

QUOTES from the movie

“We’re all going the same way. We’re just taking different roads to get there, that’s all. You’re on your own road.”

“You got to do what you’re meant to do.”

“It’s not about how well you play. It’s how you feel about what you’re playing.”

“Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.”

“You can be mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You can swear and curse the fates. But when it comes to the end, you have to let go.”

“For what it’s worth, it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be.”

“There’s something peaceful, even comforting, knowing the people you love are asleep in their beds where nothing can harm them.”

“It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.”

“Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.”

“You never know what’s coming for you.”

“It has no time limit. You can start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best of it or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things that you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. And if you find you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”“You can be mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You can swear and curse the fates. But when it comes to the end, you have to let go.”

This isn't a feel-good film. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is

a bittersweet tale about a man who ages backwards. It's loosely

based upon an obscure F. Scott Fitzgerald short story contained in

the 1922 Fitzgerald work "Tales of the Jazz Age." The movie is

better than the short story, although both combine humor with

sadness and raise profound social questions about the life cycle.

We judge people, at least in part, by their appearance, especially in

a physically oriented society like the United States. If someone

looks considerably younger or older than his or her age, that

circumstance will produce a significant advantage or disadvantage

for that person. A big 15-year-old might get into a club; a

prematurely aging star that refuses surgery might lose a lucrative

role.

When I knew him, my father always looked about 15 years younger

than he was. It, therefore, wasn't surprising that he started dating

a 50-year-old woman when he was well past 60.

But his youthful looks hurt him when, at 72, he tried out for a

television commercial about World War II veterans. The casting

director, who liked my dad's acting, couldn't believe that my father

was old enough to have served in the Second World War. When my

father told the director that he was 72 years old, the man called

him a liar.

"If I was going to lie about my age, I'd make myself younger, not

older," Dad protested. He didn't get the part.

To see a picture of my father at 72, taken in late 1994, click here.

He had no cosmetic enhancements of any kind.

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" received four stars

from New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick. It's rated PG-13 for

brief war violence, cursing, and sexual situations. At nearly three

hours (167 minutes), it's a bit long, but never boring.

This is not the first time that reverse aging has appeared on-screen.

Characters have reverse-aged on "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

and "Star Trek: Voyager." In 1991, reverse aging was the focus of

the television mini-series "Golden Years," co-written by Stephen

King. "Benjamin Button," however, is the first film to seriously deal

with reverse aging in a realistic setting, and the results are

spectacular.

"Benjamin Button" is about a man out of synch with society. The

movie opens with Benjamin as a wizened newborn in the condition

of an octogenarian. He is not expected to live. Benjamin's horrified

upper middle class father abandons the baby on the doorstep of a

black family in 1919 New Orleans.

While the film contains just enough comic relief to offset its

intensity, the Fitzgerald tale commences with glorious slapstick. In

the short story, Benjamin is born to a wealthy family in

antebellumBaltimore and begins life as a full-grown 70-year-old

man who wisecracks to his unnerved father. Benjamin complains

about noise in the nursery, grousing, "I haven't been able to get a

wink of sleep. I asked for something to eat, and they brought me a

bottle of milk." Benjamin then demands a suit and a cane from his

dad.

Fitzgerald, whose writings focused on the wealthy, shows the

father fearful of how this bizarre addition to his family will affect

his social standing. In the film, bigotry is implied, but in the

Fitzgerald story, it's overt. Benjamin's father would rather have an

ordinary black child than his senior son. At 18, a 50-year-old-

looking Benjamin is rudely rejected from college and dubbed a

"wandering Jew." He is lower than the despised blacks and Jews of

the late-nineteenth-century South.

By contrast, the movie demonstrates Benjamin's isolation by

portraying him as a boy trapped in an old man's body. Although he

possesses a healthy amount of curiosity, Benjamin Button is

confined to a wheelchair for the first seven years of his life. He lives

in a boarding house for the elderly.

Benjamin's reverse aging becomes an increasing advantage for

him, but only up to a point. As his physical condition improves, he

begins to engage in normal activities. In the short story, he goes

into business with his father and marries. In the film, Benjamin

Button (Brad Pitt) becomes a merchant mariner shortly before

World War II, grows about eight inches, and has a brief affair with

a lusty, classy middle-aged woman in a New Orleans hotel.

In one of the few funny scenes in the movie, an adolescent Button,

who looks about 75, exhausts a young prostitute in a brothel. The

advantage that Benjamin Button enjoys reaches its zenith when

he's about 40. For a few precious years, he looks his age. At this

point in the short story, Benjamin is fully accepted by his father and

in-laws. In the film, he begins a deep love affair with his childhood

playmate, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), who bears him a daughter.

But in his senior years, Benjamin's reverse aging becomes a

growing burden to him and to those around him. His outcast status

returns with a vengeance. In the short story, an aging Benjamin,

trapped in an increasingly young person's body-- is once again

scorned by his family, especially his son, who frequently upbraids

him as the child which he has become. In the film, a 50-plus-year-

old Benjamin Button, who appears to be in his early 30s, reluctantly

abandons Daisy and his daughter. He advises Daisy to marry

someone else because she "can't raise both of us."

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" provides a stark

demonstration of how extreme youth and age often share similar

characteristics, such as helplessness. Here, the film does a better

job than the Fitzgerald story. The scenes of Daisy tending to

Benjamin as he regresses into infancy are touching and nearly

unbearable. The short story begins as a good joke that gradually

turns horrid. The film and Fitzgerald express themselves

differently, but they ultimately arrive at the same place.

The later parts of the tale are sadly fascinating, whether watched

or read. I recommend doing both, in whichever order you prefer.

Forwards or backwards, it's a mind-bender and a heart-render.

Downbeat ending notwithstanding, the film retains a silver lining.

Benjamin accepts his fate. "There are no limits," intones Pitt in a

gentle Louisiana drawl. He advises folks to make the best of what

they have, while they have it. Shortly thereafter, an interview with

a 68-year-old woman who just swam the English Channel appears

on a television screen.

This movie will have special meaning for anyone who has ever felt

"different" or "left out," which is probably most of us. It includes

the physically, mentally, and emotionally handicapped; many

healthy teenagers; people in strange places; and those with serious

illnesses.

Benjamin Button has a limited amount of time in which to live with

the woman and daughter he loves. Real-life analogies come to

mind: the terminally ill; Alzheimer's patients; soldiers going off to

war.

The story of Benjamin Button hits home for me because I grew up

having an anorexic mother. You can read more about that situation

in the archives of Suite 101.com, Part I and Part II. Suffice it to say

here that the experience made me different and isolated.

With a copious amount of therapy, my outlook on life has

significantly improved. You could say that I have emotionally

reverse-aged, from deeply jaded to cautiously optimistic.

As a result of the ravages of extreme self-starvation, my mother in

her mid-forties looked about twice her age. She died at 49. Like

Brad's Benjamin Button, my mother in her later years cut herself

off from friends and family. She rapidly forward aged. Benjamin

Button reverse aged. Neither of them could help it.

There are other curious factors that drew me to "The Curious Case

of Benjamin Button." Brad Pitt's character is at maximum

chronological normalcy at 49, the age at which my mother died,

and the age I'll be in another year. Don't worry; I expect to be

around for a long time. I'm in excellent physical shape, and with

one notable exception, I come from a long-lived family.

For some strange reason, the number "11" frequently recurs in my

life. I live on the 11th floor and was born on the 11th of January. The

ticket at the movie theatre cost $11.00, and "The Curious Case of

Benjamin Button" was playing in Theatre 11 of the Cineplex.

Fitzgerald's short story has 11 chapters. My 50th birthday will be on

1-11-11. I have no idea as to what all of this means, but it sure is

curious.

In the film, water is a powerful metaphor for ripples in time. A

chronologically young Benjamin Button goes off to sea, and an

elderly Daisy, on her hospital deathbed, tells Benjamin's life story

to her astonished daughter (Julia Ormand) in the wake of Hurricane

Katrina.

There is a natural ebb and flow to life. Some things are meant to

be; others are not. And, like Benjamin Button, we should all strive

to live life to its fullest and make the best of what we have.

Prior to seeing this movie, I was already somewhat enchanted with it, because Brad Pitt is

in it, and I have enjoyed his work since first seeing him in "Thelma and Louise." After

observing his talents in various other movies, including "Seven Years in Tibet," "Fight Club,"

"Babel" and "The Mexican," and because Cate Blanchett is one of our best living actresses,

and F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of America's best writers ever, how could "Benjamin

Button" NOT be good?

Well, it was not good. It was great. It took one of the top ten spots in my mind of "Best

Movies Ever" ranking with "Gone With the Wind," "Little Big Man" and "One Flew Over the

Cuckoo's Nest."

The tale of Benjamin Button is narrated in the voice of Brad Pitt as his entries in a journal

that Daisy's daughter (Julia Ormond) reads to her mother who is dying in a hospital room in

New Orleans during a hurricane. It's a period piece, wonderfully directed by David Fincher

("Fight Club" and "Se7en").

Brad Pitt plays the son of a woman who dies in childbirth in 1918 on the day the First World

War has ended. Benjamin's father is so grief-stricken by the death of his wife and horrified

by the sight of his son who looks like a shriveled old man, that Benjamin almost does not

make it beyond the first few minutes of the movie. A police officer shows up just as Mr.

Button is about to throw his infant son into the river. Mr. Button darts off, clutching the baby

whose life is spared due to "Plan B," which entails leaving the infant in a bundle at the foot

of a staircase leading up to a senior citizens home where Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a

proud Black woman, is the proprietess.

Queenie's boyfriend, Tizzy, trips on the bundle and is aghast when the blanket is peeled

back to reveal the baby's unusual features. His immediate impulse is to take the baby to the

police. Queenie gasps at the sight, too, but determines that "this child is special" and makes

room for him in her home.

And so Benjamin Button begins his life as a little old man who appears to be in his 80's. But

he is surrounded by several seniors who are all on their way to the "next plane" and he

enjoys a comfortable "childhood." As the years pass, so, too, do the people, eliciting this

observation from Benjamin: "I was thinking how nothing lasts, and what a shame that is."

But before Benjamin's friends die, they bestow information or talents that Benjamin will be

able to use in his life which appears to be going in the opposite direction. For instance, for

several years he is a shrunken bald man relegated to a wheelchair. As time goes on, his

hair grows out, and he learns to walk. One lady who boards at Queenie's teaches Benjamin

to play the piano. Tizzy has come to accept and love Queenie's "son" and teaches him

about Shakespeare.

Another boarder at Queenie's is a woman with a grandchild named "Daisy." It is while

Benjamin is around seven that he and Daisy become fast friends. They flow and ebb in and

out of each other's lives for the next several decades. Daisy becomes a woman of the

world, a ballet dancer of promising talent. Her career is cut short during an interesting

segment that shows how if only one of many links in a chain of circumstances had been

altered, Daisy would not have been in a car accident that ruined her leg for dancing.

At seventeen Benjamin feels it is time to go and make his way in the world. He becomes

second mate on a tug boat, learns about alcohol and women, and the value of money. He

has a brief but strong affair with a married woman named Elisabeth (Tilda Swinton) who as

a girl almost swam the English Channel but stopped two miles short. She seems wistful and

angry about it, much the way she feels about her relationship with her husband. One day

Benjamin finds a note simply saying "It was nice to have met you." The loose end of

Elisabeth is tied later when Daisy and Benjamin have entered the period when they are both

around the same age and madly in love with each other. A television set presents news of a

woman who in her sixties has finally swum the English Channel - Elisabeth. Benjamin notes

this in the corner of his eye and flashes a smile as Daisy pays no mind to the TV.

It is the nature of man and woman to feel that today will last forever, but in the case of

Benjamin and Daisy, their window of fun and frivolity is shorter than it is for most couples.

She continues to age while he becomes even younger. In possibly the most poignant scene

of the movie, Daisy asks Benjamin, "Would you still love me if I were old and saggy?" He

responds, "Would you still love ME if I were young and had acne? When I'm afraid of what's

under the bed? Or if I end up wetting the bed?"

When Daisy becomes pregnant and bears the daughter of Benjamin, he realizes that he

cannot be the father that the girl will need, and after making financial provisions for his wife

and daughter, using the inheritance from his father, he rides away on a motorcycle, in

hopes that Daisy will find a worthy man to father his little girl.

I don't want to give too much away, except to say that this film touches on so many issues

that are important to us - the relationship between a father and his son, between a mother

and daughter, between a man and a woman; the importance of true love, the need for

adventure and the requirement to undertake adventure before you are too old; the value of

communicating your feelings and of not judging. Even with its long running time (166

minutes) it never lags. Watching Benjamin grow young as all the other characters grew old

was truly amazing ; kudos to the special effects and make-up people.

I've read a few reviews of this movie by critics who say that it's magical but not magical

enough, that it's dense but yet too airy, that it's everything F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted it to be

but it's gumpier than "Forrest Gump." Those reviews are filtered, I'm afraid, through people

who look for something to criticize.

As my friend Lori said, "I LOVE this movie. If you wanted to pop it into the DVD player right

now, I would sit down and watch it with you all over again."

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