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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Review

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

There is one obvious similarity between The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump, and that is both movies tell stories about a man’s life. Other than this, Benjamin Button is nothing like Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump. In Benjamin Button, the central theme of the movie is vague. You can list many topics the movie touched on in a time span of almost 3 hours, but you can never pinpoint one single theme that stands out and the movie intends to focus on. Maybe because of this lack of focus, some people consider Benjamin Button as a long and boring ramble of a fantasy-like character, and instead prefer to spend the 3-hours surfing on, maybe Facebook. However, personally I find the movie a successful attempt in portraying the lifetime of any real human being. If you think about it, does one’s life focus on one single theme, or is one’s life a collage of various human experience of love, hate, fear of death, forgiveness, etc?

Admittedly, Benjamin Button is an extraordinary individual, a person who ages reversely, but this does not make him any less real or hard to relate to. His loneliness in his unusual childhood, his early encounters with death, his love and his heartache, I am sure they echo in many viewers’ heart.

Benjamin Button

Visually, Benjamin Button is a beautiful movie. The motorcycle ride on the narrow road alongside the vast field, the majestic sunrise at the ocean pier, and the misty morning fog on the tugboat, you are reminded time after time to pay a bit more attention of our surroundings as we walk through the path of life, because these scenery make us to contemplate about life.

In my opinion, Cate Blanchett had a better performance than Brad Pitt. In some scenes, Brad Pitt seemed too dull and apathetic. I don’t know if he did on purpose, but his apathy definitely made some scenes lack of emotional outburst, everything seemed so suppressed and subtle, sometimes a bit unrealistic.

I have said a lot about this movie, but don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to defend it or to convince you to see it. After all, it depends on personal taste, but one thing for sure it does not appeal to everyone. You may be so touched that you shed tears at the end of the movie, others may yawn and complain that the movie drags too long. In my case, I walked out the theater thinking: No matter which direction your biological clock is ticking towards, we always loses in the battle with time, and when we reach the end of journey, it is those lasting moments and unforgettable people we met that make our life worth of living.

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  2. » The Curious Case of Benjamin Button continue d’attiser la curiosité des cinéphiles - ZeFilm@MyRecap

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