But when commitment comes, contentment, brief though it may be, ensues.īenjamin’s story is preceded by Daisy’s recollection of a watch maker (Elias Koteas), who having lost his beloved son in World War I made a clock for the New Orleans train station that ran backwards so that time might move the same way and his boy would come back to him. Also she can’t quite make up her mind about involvement with a man growing younger each year. The job on a tug boat with its hard-drinking pilot (Jared Harris) takes him to Russia and an affair with a British spy’s wife (Tilda Swinton) and then into naval action in World War II.Īfter the war, Daisy’s career takes off. Much keeps them apart though as Daisy pursues a career in ballet while Benjamin, once he gets a handle on what’s happening to him, is a man who will never feel comfortable in his own skin. Their friendship will last both of their lifetimes - although ones moving in opposite directions - and will evolve into romance and passionate love. As a somewhat younger old man, he meets Daisy as a small girl (Elle Fanning) visiting an ancient relative. He truly fits in among African-Americans and people old and forgotten by time.

Henson), who runs the place, takes him in and raises him in the one environment where he can pass unnoticed. A maternal black woman, Queenie (Taraji P. His mother dies giving birth and his father (Jason Flemyng) abandons him, fittingly, at an old-age home. He was, he writes, “born under unusual circumstances.” He’s a baby that looks like a failing man in his 80’s with poor eyesight, brittle bones and wrinkled flesh. The memoirist is none other than Benjamin (Pitt), born on the day of victory in Europe in 1918. Daisy (Cate Blanchett), a dying woman in a New Orleans hospital, gives her daughter (Julia Ormond) a memoir to read as Hurricane Katrina bears down on the city.

But Fincher, an unusual but winning choice as director, makes certain that “Benjamin Button” has none of the whimsy or coy historical revisionism of Forrest Gump.Įven the framework for the story underscores that there are forces within nature that man cannot control. The film shares elements with another Eric Roth-written film, Forrest Gump, wherein a most unusual man sets out on an odyssey through 20th century American history. Although hard to pigeonhole, the picture comes closest to Latin American magic realism, which juxtaposes the fantastic with the realistic.

The button movie