Review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) by Sanchayan S — 16 Apr 2014

David Fincher's adaptation of the short story of the same name is an elegant piece of imagery but stumbles when some of the plot points create an awkward sense of storytelling. This tale is basically a short story - a premise that is quite hard to adapt and making a screenplay upon.

Eric Roth does a fair job for the most part but the sheer nature of the adaptation was flowing against the essence of storytelling. A story where"someone is aging backwards and having a romance with a traditional being with a normal life cycle is bound to create awkward plot joints when represented in form of drama.

This story is no different - right from the slow pace of the movie to the less interactions between the leads through half of the movie , the film suffers at every point of storytelling. There are points of awkwardness which are not handled properly in the movie thereby leading to the sense of unbelievable nature , making the audience more dis connected from the narrative.

However despite the hurdles , the film works on so many levels :- to begin with both Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt gave powerful performances that overcomes the occasional failures of the screenplay. Yes it is true the editing of the movie suffers and is probably the main reason why it cannot make proper connection with the audience but the imagery of the story is done elegantly with brilliant piece of cinematography and excellent use of lights , colors and setting.

Regarding the setting the production design is excellent and with proper photography the production value of the movie is very high. In fact when you have 165 minutes of elegant cinematography you are bound to like something of the film.

Apart from high production values and excellent performances the cinema has a brilliant visual aesthetic which adds to the story , soft images of warmth and cold to represent different stages and relationships within the story.

Therefore on a film making level this is excellent but fails to properly channel with the audience.