The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Benjamin Button grows young and spends his life coping with the oddity of being different than everyone else; at least everyone else thinks he’s different.
Film making 24/25
Cinematography 24/25
Audio 23/25
Bonus Features 25/25
Total 96/100
Based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a great story of a man who is born old and grows young. He lives his life at first thinking he is normal but then slowly realizing he is not exactly different but unique in his own way.
Benjamin Button, played by Brad Pitt, had a troubled birth and his mother died bringing him into this world but his father wants nothing to do with him when he first sees his shrunken body. Benjamin is a small infant but has all the frailties of being an old man including arthritis and bad eyesight.
He is left on the door step of a nursing home for the elderly when Thomas Button, Benjamin’s father, panics after trying to drop the baby in the river and a police officer sees him. The couple helping to take care of the elderly at the nursing home Queenie played by Taraji P. Henson and Tizzy played by Mahershalalhashbaz Ali take the boy in and help him understand this world.
Tizzy is the cook for the nursing home and helps Queenie raise the boy as best they can as he grows into a young boy getting better and healthier as the years go by. Benjamin at first does not understand he is all that different but eventually comes to know he is when others die off in their old age yet he becomes stronger and eventually walks on his own.
He sees one day that he must leave after he has become friends with some of the residents and their families, especially a young girl named Daisy. Benjamin takes a liking to Daisy that they both don’t understand and mistake for friendship and soon Benjamin leaves to seek his life outside the nursing home.
One day while he was sitting with some other older men on the wharf a boat captain asked if anyone wanted to help crew the tugboat for some work and Benjamin volunteered. He was excited to see something other than the local area near the nursing home as Queenie would not let him wander far as well as get paid for the menial labor.
After several outings with Captain Mike, played by Jared Harris, he ends up taking a longer voyage with him on an extended work tour. When World War II starts they end up towing ships for the war effort but never get close to combat until a U-boat sinks the ship they are supposed to tow.
The U-boat fires on them with its machine gun and wounds and kills several of the crew along with Captain Mike but Benjamin survives the encounter. Benjamin is rescued by the Navy and his first worldly encounter and work ends with his return to the nursing home and Queenie.
Benjamin sees Daisy a few times between his working for the tugboat captain and other times as well as seeing more of the world with the tugboat work. He ends up having a lifelong affair with Daisy but they do not spend much time together as they are always going in opposite directions.
Daisy was a ballet dancer until an automobile accident broke her legs severely and the doctors do not think she will walk again. Benjamin rushes to her side and they spend several years together with her getting better and then growing in love with each other.
Daisy sees him getting younger while she ages and they both know that their relationship cannot last for long as the differences of Benjamin’s curious aging will eventually break them up. They end up splitting up as Benjamin refuses to let Daisy take care of him while he grows younger into an uncertain future and he goes off to see more of the world.
When Benjamin is 62 he comes back to the dance studio that Daisy has started and is introduced to her daughter and new husband. Daisy tells Benjamin that their daughter is doing well but is not following in her mother’s footsteps in dance.
They discuss the fact that it was better for Benjamin to leave and allow their daughter to grow up in a more normal family as Benjamin now looks to be a young man in his late teens. Benjamin leaves and a few years later Daisy ends up finding out what has happened to him one day when he finally comes to her for the last time.
Daisy receives a call from social workers about a young child who they thought had dementia and sought her out because of her name in his diary. Daisy ends up taking care of Benjamin until he dies as an infant having lived an extraordinary but totally normal life as far as he was concerned.
The story is told from the perspective of Daisy making her daughter read the diaries and other postcards that she had kept and now the daughter understands who her father was. The film is a great F. Scott Fitzgerald story taken to its logical film length and tells a fascinating tale not of an oddity but of normal human death and dying, life and how we perceive ourselves.
The director and producer did an outstanding job of keeping the flavor and tone of F. Scott Fitzgerald from the short story and made the film a classic brought to the screen. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a great film and has plenty of extras on the Blu-ray Criterion Collection Edition.
There is a full disc of bonus features in the Criterion Collection including a long making of feature, audio commentary from director David Fincher, interviews with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and much more. The extras include a lot of information about the creative talents that went into the film including makeup and computer work for the look of Benjamin Button as he aged in reverse.
The extras on the second disc include a very long, almost three hour, making of feature that gives a lot of insight into the films technical side as well as the problems encountered. The film took twenty years to bring from conception to theatres due to many factors including having to wait for technology to catch up to the aspects of the film.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a great film and with all the extras included on both the commentary track of the Blu-ray film and the second disc makes for a fantastic value. The film captures life’s moments that we all go through in exact detail that do not necessarily make for anything above normal but using a unique style that catches your attention by the curious way that Benjamin ages.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is easily the best Blu-ray movie I have seen so far in all my reviews with its great film in superb high definition and numerous entertaining extras.