Moral Film Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) - A Timeless Treasure

I doubt F. Scott Fitzgerald would have expected a film adaptation of his “Curious Case of Benjamin Button” to be quite so serious. The original story plays out more as a satire, a comic “what if”. Director David Fincher and screenwriter legend Eric Roth (writer of Forest Gump) have taken a bold step in altering the classic to be romantic, tragic, and historical. The resulting “Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is a timeless epic of man’s battle with inevitability.

That man is Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), who was “born under unusual circumstances” in the city of New Orleans, just after the civil war. That’s putting it lightly. Benjamin was born old and grew younger through life. Unlike the classic, however, the film adaptation actually has the details of his birth, which are rather disheartening. Benjamin’s mother gives her life for him, and his father, seeing the coughing, weak, wrinkled Benjamin as some ungodly creature, abandons him by a home for the elderly (ironically well chosen for his condition). While young in spirit, Benjamin quickly learns of the inescapable mortal destiny awaiting us all, and learns acceptance from his fellow tenants.

As old looking, young-hearted Benjamin grows, he meets Daisy (Cate Blanchett), whom he describes as “the most beautiful woman” he has ever seen. While their chemistry is unmistakable, the prospect of a relationship is physically unthinkable, him so old and her so young. Instead, he goes off to travel the world as a tugboat crewman, and she chases her dreams becoming a dancer. They both have many trials and joys pursuing their dreams and adventures.

Then, perchance, their lives entwine again. As Daisy’s career as a dancer draws to a close, she seeks Benjamin out. The details of his condition make it clear early on that a lasting relationship would be rather impossible, but they both learn the interminable value of a moment. It doesn’t last, as the film itself makes clear. Time moves ever forward, and they are quite powerless to stop time. Or are they?

What I have given so far are the highlights of the general storyline of David Fincher’s “Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. On its own, the story would be a waste of the viewer’s time, telling the life of one man’s journey’s through history with a quite impossible condition. Yes, the story is supposed to be fantasy, but even effective fantasies must have some thread of truth to tie them together and give the story importance. What could the impossible case of Benjamin Button possible have to offer to us viewers? I believe David Fincher and Eric Roth had the same question, and they hit it right on the nail. This is not a story about Benjamin’s condition at all; it’s a story about the tyranny of time!

There is one scene in the beginning of the film that illustrates this tyranny. A blind clockmaker in New Orleans loses his son to the civil war. He continues to make clocks to help him deal with his grief, and later creates a great clock for public use. When he reveals the clock, everyone is surprised to find that the clock moves backwards. The clockmaker says that he hoped time might step backwards, so the war would not have started, and all their lost loved ones would be home in happier times. This image is magnificent; it reminds us that our progression towards the future has had a costly past.

When it comes down to it, there are two ways to think about time, and this film touches on both of them. Time can be a tyrant, dragging mortal beings through life unwillingly to their eventual ends, from the end of a dream, to the end of a relationship, and finally to the end of a life. All things end, so why begin? Do we fight the inevitable, or do we see time for what it is? The transcendent view of time leaves destiny to passing thoughts and dwells in the joys and the sorrows of the moment.

True love understands time. Benjamin cares for Daisy, and when the time is right, he make sacrifices for her well being. Until that time, he shows no hesitation, no apprehension, no fear of what tomorrow brings. The time he had with Daisy was undoubtedly the happiest moments of his life. I was reminded of an elderly man in Orson Wells’ Citizen Kane, who spoke of a young beautiful woman he met briefly in his youth. He saw her for only a few seconds, but he never forgot her. He, like Benjamin, knows just how precious a moment is.