Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

"...Pitt and Blanchett are outstanding. Fincher's meticulous attention to detail is unerring, down to the light fixtures.  Jenni Miller, Premiere
"Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date.  Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter
"Brad Pitt's sensitive performance helps make Benjamin Button a timeless masterpiece.  Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun
"A movie that must be experienced. A monumental achievement.  Rex Reed, The New York Observer
"...Fincher gives the film a power and unity that make nearly three hours go by in a flash...  William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Editor's Note At once epic in scope and intimate in detail, David Fincher's THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON is certainly the director's most emotional film to date (though FIGHT CLUB and SEVEN don't offer much in the way of competition). Loosely based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, this romantic drama tells the tale of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), born in 1918 in New Orleans as a baby with wrinkles, cataracts, and arthritis. Benjamin will age backwards, getting younger as he watches those around him growing older. Included in that group are his adoptive mother, Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), and Daisy (Cate Blanchett), the love of his life whom he meets when she is just a little girl and he is an old man. They age in reverse, but despite Benjamin's globe-trotting adventures, their lives repeatedly intersect. The script from Oscar winner Eric Roth bears more than a few hallmarks in common with his earlier work on FORREST GUMP: both adaptations cross decades and continents. But BENJAMIN's script or even the fine acting aren't its most impressive accomplishment; the technology--both CGI and makeup--used to make Benjamin and Daisy age are remarkable, and makes the film entirely believable, but they're certainly aided by fine performances from both Pitt and Blanchett. The triumph of technology only serves to underscore the beauty of this film and of the love story at its heart.

	Tilda Swinton
	Jason Flemyng
	Julia Ormond
	Elias Koteas
	Cate Blanchett
	Taraji P. Henson
	Brad Pitt
	Elle Fanning
	F. Scott Fitzgerald - Source Writer
	Frank Marshall - Producer
	Alexandre Desplat - Composer
	Ceán Chaffin - Producer
	Eric Roth - Screenwriter
	Claudio Miranda - Director of Photography
	Kathleen Kennedy - Producer
	David Fincher - Director

Rolling Stone
3 stars out of 4 -- "The movie looks amazing....The technical wizardry sweeps you away....[Fincher's] astutely restrained direction fuses ferocity and feeling and creates a world you want to get lost in." 01/08/2008 p.118

USA Today
3 stars out of 4 -- "Set in a visually stunning realm of heightened reality....BUTTON is never dull, and the conclusion is graceful and poignant." 12/26/2008

New York Times
"[A] triumph of technique....Mr. Fincher has added a dimension of delicacy and grace to digital filmmaking." 12/26/2008

Premiere
4 stars out of 4 -- "Pitt and Blanchett are outstanding. Fincher's meticulous attention to detail is unerring..." 12/24/2008

Box Office
4 stars out of 5 -- "Pitt's performance is amazingly unadorned and natural..."

Entertainment Weekly
"[A]n extravagantly ambitious movie....The movie has been in the works for years, pored over by Fincher like a favorite fairy tale from his childhood." -- Grade: A- 01/01/2009

Empire
5 stars out of 5 -- "That the trick never feels tricksy is partly down to Pitt's gentle, sympathetic performance....A film for the ages..." 02/01/2009

Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "[A]n epic of rare scope and scale....Bold and brilliant..." 02/01/2009

Hollywood Reporter
"[A]n epic tale that contemplates the wonders of life -- of birth and death and, most of all, love....Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date..." 11/24/2008

ReelViews 9 of 10
The premise underlying The Curious Case of Benjamin Button might sound more appropriate for a science fiction tale than a meditative drama. Indeed, the concept of a man aging backward has formed the basis for more than one sci-fi tinged story - from novels to an animated Star Trek episode - but the source material for this film is a 1922 short written by acclaimed novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. The original "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" functions as little more than an inspiration for this movie, which takes the idea and the name and follows a divergent path from the one mapped out by Fitzgerald. David Fincher's film is its own entity and, despite some minor flaws, it is undeniably engrossing and one of the more intriguing and emotionally resonant features of the 2008 holiday season...Although the movie is presented as a series of vignettes, its full impact is not felt until the whole is absorbed. Even the 2005 scenes with Caroline by her mother's bedside feed into what Fincher and Roth are saying about chaos theory, fate, and the sometimes unforgiving jolts imparted by change. In the end, Benjamin's reverse-aging is just a filter that allows us to gain a slightly skewed perception about the process of living and, perhaps by looking through that glass darkly, a better understanding of human nature. Is that too much for a mainstream movie to achieve? Perhaps, and I'm not sure The Curious Case of Benjamin Button takes us as far down that path as it might hope to. But there's no denying the film's power of compulsion and the sense that, when it's all over, it means something. Most viewers will be entertained and moved, and some will find their intellect aroused. The source material may be F. Scott Fitzgerald, but The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has come a long way from where it started 86 years ago. - James Berardinelli

Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a splendidly made film based on a profoundly mistaken premise. It tells the story of a man who is old when he is born and an infant when he dies. All those around him, everyone he knows and loves, grow older in the usual way, and he passes them on the way down. As I watched the film, I became consumed by a conviction that this was simply wrong...Let me paraphrase the oldest story I know: In the beginning, there was nothing, and then God said, "Let there be light." Everything comes after the beginning, and we all seem to share this awareness of the direction of time's arrow. There is a famous line by e.e. cummings that might seem to apply to Benjamin Button: and down he forgot as up he grew. But no, it involves the process of forgetting our youth as we grow older...The movie's premise devalues any relationship, makes futile any friendship or romance, and spits, not into the face of destiny, but backward into the maw of time. It even undermines the charm of compound interest. In the film, Benjamin (Brad Pitt) as an older man is enchanted by a younger girl (Cate Blanchett)...I said the film is well-made, and so it is. The actors are the best: Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Elias Koteas, Tilda Swinton. Given the resources and talent here, quite a movie might have resulted. But it's so hard to care about this story. There is no lesson to be learned. No catharsis is possible. In Fitzgerald's version, even Benjamin himself fails to comprehend his fate. He's born as a man with a waist-length beard who can read the encyclopedia, but in childhood, plays with toys and throws temper tantrums, has to be spanked and then disappears into a wordless reverie. "Benjamin" rejects these logical consequences because, I suspect, an audience wouldn't sit still for them...I can't imagine many people wanting to see the movie twice. - Roger Ebert