The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is curious, but, unfortunately, not interesting.  The gimmick is that a child is born as an old man and then gets younger as his life progresses.  One would think that this premise would lead to all sorts of fascinating explorations about youth, wisdom, and our expectations of how people should behave at various stages in life, but this movie is not concerned with those conundrums.  Instead, it tells a straightforward love story — one that wouldn’t be much different were the backwards aging issue not raised at all.

Benjamin and Daisy cross ages in mid life.

A movie with a main character who ages in reverse is going to raise a lot of questions about chronology.  One of my major problems with this movie is that the ages of the characters are never properly anchored and they also don’t make sense.  For instance, Benjamin is about age 88 when he is born.  He meets Daisy, who is about age 9, when he is about 80.  They become childhood friends.  He then goes off to explore the world.  When he returns Daisy is 23.  This means that Benjamin should be 66.  He looks more like 50, however. It would help tremendously if the movie would mark the passage of time for us in an obvious way so that we could keep track — instead, we are left scratching our heads and constantly wondering how old the various characters are.  In a normal movie, of course, one would not be so concerned with how old people are, but when the whole point of the movie is that one character is aging backwards, well, it does cross your mind.

Another problem with the movie is that we never see Benjamin growing up.  Early in his life he would presumably have the body of a man about 80 and the maturity of an 8-year-old.  Instead, he seems merely be an 80-year-old man who gets along normally with people and is able to befriend a 10-year-old girl.  There is one scene where he is shown enjoying a story being read, but that is the only nod to his immaturity as an old man in the entire movie.

The biggest copout in the movie, however, occurs toward the end of Benjamin’s life.  At this point he has the body of a teenager, but has been alive for over 70 years — so the old adage that youth is wasted on the young will not apply here!  Unfortunately, rather than ponder the possibilities of a teenager with the wisdom of a 70-year-old, the movie decides to give him dementia.  All he is able to do as a ruddy 16-year-old is stare blankly at people whose names he has forgotten.  Later Benjamin is depicted as a 5-year-old throwing a temper tantrum (presumably due to his dementia) and knocking over some dishes — much as a real 5-year-old might do.  So the entire conceit of the movie is avoided.

The book is probably better than the movie.

The bulk of the movie is occupied by the love story between Daisy and Benjamin.  At some point after the age of 23 Daisy decides to fall in love with Benjamin and they spend a few years in blissful happiness living in an apartment.  Then Daisy has a child and Benjamin, who is about 40 at this point, claims that it will be too difficult for Daisy to raise two children (since he will become a child in due course) and uses this excuse to leave her.  Chronologically, of course, Benjamin will be an adult for another 20+ years, which is more than enough time to raise a child, so this explanation makes no sense.

On the whole, the movie explores no questions about aging, wisdom, the passage of time, youth, or any other issue that you think might be raised by a character aging backwards.  The result is a big disappointment.