monoceros blogsI love fall and winter for the excellent films that get released, and one that I'm especially looking forward to is "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." It stars the exquisite Cate Blanchett who can carry adolescent innocence in a glance, and gravitas and grace with her voice alone. How wonderful that her character is named Daisy - after Gatsby's great love in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby - and not the original Hildegarde. And then there's Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button, a character that will let him stretch his acting skills. Benjamin Button is born looking like an old man, and as he ages, his appearance grows more youthful. It will be fascinating to watch Benjamin Button - vertically challenged, bespectacled, gray-haired at seven years old - who grows into an impossibly young man, all of sixteen years with his unblemished face and corn-colored hair, and a far older soul. (You'll see the young - or old, depending on how you look at it - Mr. Button at the end of the second trailer.)
Fitzgerald's short story was largely inspired by Mark Twain, who remarked that "it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end." So he turned things round for one lucky individual, or unlucky, considering that Benjamin Button's aging process is unique among his family and friends. Since then, several authors have taken this concept on board. Andrew Sean Greer is one who did so. In The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Max Tivoli ages backwards. He also meets the girl he loves three times; on each occasion, she doesn't recognize him.
Director David Fincher and the film's writers appear to have been similarly inspired as they developed the brief story into a more epic film. Benjamin gets to meet Daisy when she is six, and again when she's in her 20s. However, she appears to know who he is and has accepted the strangeness of his condition. In the short story, the theme focuses on our attitudes toward aging, but there's plenty else in the story to mine, and Fincher appears to be thoroughly exploring a relationship where one person grows old while the other becomes increasingly young and potent. I'm excited to see how the film reflects our fixations on youth, beauty, mortality, and demonstrates how love endures - or doesn't - the vicissitudes of life, our appearances, our desires.
"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been." ~ Madeleine L'Engle
Posted by Monoceros at October 6, 2008 8:12 AM