THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (PG-13) ****

Directed by David Fincher. 168 minutes.
Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, Tilda Swinton, Elias Koteas and Taraji P. Henson. Released by Paramount Pictures.

Such an odd spectacle is David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a nearly three-hour elegy on love, death and time that is borne out of the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, no less, but bears more in comparison to Forrest Gump – by way of Tim Burton, that is. While this may sound like an epic tale of whimsy and treacle, it defies all that through an occasionally morose sense of humor, constant oddities and quirks – though the film also defies being quirky – and a genuinely emotional experience. It’s lush to look at and all the more amazing that Fincher shot the film digitally, much like his impeccable Zodiac. Both film look as rich and textured as any shot on film and it could be that the director is leading even George Lucas himself in the race to convert Hollywood filmmaking to the medium.

“I was born under extraordinary circumstances,” the titular character (Brad Pitt) tells us at its beginning. After his mother dies in childbirth, Benjamin is dropped by his father on the stoop of a New Orleans retirement home, which is run by the generous Queenie (a terrific Taraji P. Henson). Benjamin is the size of an infant but has the body of an elderly man. “He looks just like my ex-husband,” exclaims one of the home’s tenants. Though Benjamin is frail of body, he behaves like any other child, playing soldiers with toys and nearly landing himself in trouble through his curiosity. The home is filled with eccentrics, including an opera singer, a Pygmy visitor and – in what is easily the film’s funniest running joke – a man who has been hit by lightning seven times. Benjamin’s birth and physical circumstances may or may not have something to do with a heartbroken clockmaker (Elias Koteas) and his magnificent clock that has been
bestowed on the Louisiana city  post-World War I, or maybe not. Fincher is interested in mythmaking as well as storytelling in his film, so questions are left unanswered. Then again, the film weaves its story for nearly three hours around the question of why things happen the way they do and in what order. The picture is as much about fate as it is time.

There are many gorgeous things to look at here, from the crowded brothels of Nawlins to a tugboat at sea battling a German U-Boat. Amid all the questions about time’s cruelties and life’s circumstantial happenings is a love story between Benjamin and life-long pal Daisy (Cate Blanchett). Their courtship is a strange one. “Will you still love me when I have acne?” he inquires of her. Much like Gump, Fincher squeezes in a lot in his film, including two World Wars, swingin’ 1950s New York, The Beatles and Hurricane Katrina. Despite its setting in early 20th Century New Orleans, there is no mention of racism or hint of bigotry. Then again, Button’s peculiar upbringing in the old folks’ home smacks somewhat of a commune existence, where its oddballs are sheltered of the cold world outside.
That cold world comes in as Benjamin leaves home. Members of his tugboat crew are killed. Daisy has an accident which sets back her dancing career. Benjamin’s long lost father returns, though this subplot refreshingly has no sinister connotations to it as one might expect. People die. Benjamin grows younger.

Pitt, playing the titular character at virtually every step along the road to childhood, gives a strong performance here, adding to his credentials another fine performance in a career that defies categorization. In the past few years, he has been the distraught husband of Babel, the solemn anti-hero of Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the lovable numbskull gym employee of Burn After Reading. Benjamin Button is not the easiest performance to pull off, but we never really feel like Pitt is looking for Academy Award points.
Fincher’s story is centered around that time-honored structure of the sick hospital patient telling the story to their younger progeny (in this case, Julia Ormond as Blanchett’s daughter) but the film, much like Tim Burton’s Big Fish, does not resort to cheap sentimentality. – OK, so a last-minute appearance of a hummingbird could possibly have been avoid, but no mind. Much like Burton’s film, Benjamin Button aims for higher things than just revelations and drawn handkerchiefs. Although the film is Hollywood all the way, it’s more ambitious than your usual prestige picture opening at the end of the year with a cast like this one.

In the end, Button follows an Augie March-styled, picaresque adventure that makes stops in Russia, India, Tibet, the American South, New York City and various other places. You could apply the old saying about the journey being more significant than the destination and it would apply here, but Fincher’s film is most effective in its idea that life’s difficulties, disappointments and badly-dealt hands can be equally burdensome and miraculous.