Brad Pitt & Tilda Swinton in Button. Watch the trailer: http://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-curious-case-of-benjamin-button/23060/main
The Xmas season has been good so far. Besides feasting with family & friends, I've been surrounding myself with movies. I was gifted with several DVDs of choice and will try to see some new ones playing in theaters. Yesterday we caught a matinee of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button starring Brad Pitt & Cate Blanchett. It's as good as you read about it. For those who like long episodic sagas with lots of period details, this one is a feast for the eyes. Its running time of almost three hours never drags as you slowly savor the fine acting, dialogue, and production values. It's longish but never long and aided with a haunting waltz like score musical score that transports you to the correct moods. I read this was an expensive film co-produced by Paramount and Warner Brothers and all the money is up there on the screen.
The plot unfolds around a sickly boy (Pitt) born into a wealthy family in New Orleans circa 1918. He looks like an old man who looks frighten his father to abandon him. A kindly black woman finds him on her doorsteps and raises him as her own against all odds in the nursing home where she works. The gimmick is as he grows up, he ages backwards into a handsome young man while those he knows and loves age forward, all this accomplished by marvelous special effects and makeup. Button's life is the journey of an innocent whose reverse aging keeps him out of synch with the world as never finds permanent happiness because he knows he can't age along with the ones he loves.
The cast is well chosen down to the tiniest roles. Pitt proves again he is a good actor even when he's buried under makeup and digital effects. His narration's Southern drawl has the right convincing whimsy to carry along the strangeness of the story as Button's story is re-enacted from his diary left to a dying woman who wants to relive her memories of him as her daughter reads from it during the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. Blanchett is too good for words to describe as the long love of Button's lifeas well as newcomer Taraji P. Henson as Queenie, Button's adoptive mother who teaches him simple values to handle his complex life. It's good to see Tilda Swinton in a more sympathetic role as an unhappily married woman who more than befriends Button and Jared Harris as a blustery but kindly tattooed tugboat captain who gives Button his first job.
The movie is ultimately sad and heartbreaking as it gives you insight into the aging process but is not to be missed.
The plot unfolds around a sickly boy (Pitt) born into a wealthy family in New Orleans circa 1918. He looks like an old man who looks frighten his father to abandon him. A kindly black woman finds him on her doorsteps and raises him as her own against all odds in the nursing home where she works. The gimmick is as he grows up, he ages backwards into a handsome young man while those he knows and loves age forward, all this accomplished by marvelous special effects and makeup. Button's life is the journey of an innocent whose reverse aging keeps him out of synch with the world as never finds permanent happiness because he knows he can't age along with the ones he loves.
The cast is well chosen down to the tiniest roles. Pitt proves again he is a good actor even when he's buried under makeup and digital effects. His narration's Southern drawl has the right convincing whimsy to carry along the strangeness of the story as Button's story is re-enacted from his diary left to a dying woman who wants to relive her memories of him as her daughter reads from it during the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. Blanchett is too good for words to describe as the long love of Button's lifeas well as newcomer Taraji P. Henson as Queenie, Button's adoptive mother who teaches him simple values to handle his complex life. It's good to see Tilda Swinton in a more sympathetic role as an unhappily married woman who more than befriends Button and Jared Harris as a blustery but kindly tattooed tugboat captain who gives Button his first job.
The movie is ultimately sad and heartbreaking as it gives you insight into the aging process but is not to be missed.
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