The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is very loosely adapted from a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald.

Benjamin Button tells us he was born 'under unusual circumstances'. To be precise he was born a rather ugly and wrinkled baby of eighty odd years old. In the book, he started as a full sized eighty year old, so it's no wonder his mother died in childbirth but the film is done a bit differently and he is baby sized.

In the film version, his father abandons him on the steps of an old folk's home, where he is taken and raised by Queenie, a carer there. At first they think he's going to die but the ravages of old age are gradually shed from his body and he progresses from wheelchair to walking stick and then beyond. As everyone continues to grow older, he grows younger. Brad Pitt plays Button pretty much all the way through with the help of heavy make-up, CGI and having his head electronically placed on other actors bodies.



We follow his life story, from his birth in New Orleans on the day that the First World War ended right through to his death. It is told in my 'favourite' form, that of flashback, and from the deathbed of his truelove, the now elderly Daisy (Cate Blanchett) as Hurricane Katrina rages outside. Daisy's grandmother was a resident at the same home, which is where she first met Benjamin. They remain in contact throughout their lives, seemingly destined to be together, despite the two of them ageing in different directions.

It is read from his diaries by her daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond). It’s a method I'm not sure I like as it continually breaks up the storyline.

There are also other oddities. The addition of Mr Cake (Monsieur Gateau) and his train station clock that ran backwards in the hope that it would wind back time and undo the death of his Son and others from the battlefields of the Great War. I never grasped why this and its tenuous link to Benjamin's life running backwards was added.

Also, at times the film tries to do too much, like mapping out the sequence of bad luck that led to Daisy's dancing career being ended when she was struck by a Parisian taxi. Then there's the old man who was hit by lightning seven times... a slightly funny diversion but not much more.



Button is lucky he was born in 1918; had he been born in 2009 he would have been all over the papers and labelled as a freak. His life would have been 'I'm Celebrity Get Me Outta Here' hell. Instead, he leaves America working on a tugboat. He visits Russia, where he has an affair with Tilda Swinton, well someone has to I suppose, and he ends up involved in the Second World War.



When he returns, he rediscovers Daisy, now a successful dancer. Yet he turns her down, preferring to wait until he is 'young enough' for her.

After her accident, they eventually end up together and have a child. I think we all worked out long before Caroline did, what her relationship to Benjamin was. She won't remember him though because as he hurtles his way towards short trousers, he walks out of their lives. Knowing that when he becomes Kevin The Teenager, he'll be good for nothing but angst and sulks.



I thought it might end there and that they'd bottle his death as he faded back to zero, but they didn't. In fact, he came back, after a trip around the world, sowing his oats. Teenagers, they're so unreliable. Would Daisy be tempted to have one of the road and see if he was as good aged sixteen, of course she would.

It's all rather sad at the end as Daisy takes charge of the infant Benjamin and nurses him towards death.

The film has been given quite a bit of criticism in reviews but then has also gained a load of Oscar nominations. Realistically I don't see any great acting performances here, but that doesn't seem to matter, although at times the New Orleans accents grate a bit, as a whole it's a very clever film. It's also a long film but it never drags. I loved it.

Button went through much the same plusses and minuses in life as the rest of us, just in the opposite direction. The film tries to show you life from a different perspective. Like all of us, he spent a lifetime trying to figure out how this love thing works and still only just about got there. The message is that age is after all just a number and no matter what that number is, we can choose what we do with our lives but in the end, Button, like all of us, is unable to stop time.

Rachel Getting Married

'Rachel Getting Married' was a film I was looking forward to because on paper it sounded so promising. Take a typical dull family wedding and toss in the hand grenade of a young, unstable female who also happens to be a drug addict, an alcoholic and the sister of the bride, stir well, then stand back and watch the fireworks but...

Of course, it would have been hard for the estranged sister, Kym (Anne Hathaway), to throw a spanner in the workings of this affluent, privileged family from Connecticut because it was already adequately dysfunctional without her intervention.

Kym is back from a spell in rehab and returns home for her sister Rachel's (Rosemarie Dewitt) wedding. All the family's friends and relations have gathered for a whole weekend of eating, drinking, music and vomit inducing declarations of love for each other. That is when they aren't arguing. Director Jonathan Demme invites us to this wedding but just as you often wish you could, when you're invited to a real one, this invite should have been declined. It's like being forced to watch someone else's wedding video. It's even filmed like a home movie, with a hand held camera.



Honestly, you don't want to be there. They have a pre-wedding 'rehearsal dinner' that lasts longer and has more excruciating speeches than most of the worst weddings you've ever been to. Problem is we have to sit through it twice because they do it all again the next day during the wedding itself, which is the most culturally diverse wedding you'll ever see, it ticks every race and religion box on any council application form.

Other people's weddings are usually boring, that is until something 'happens' and not enough happens in this. You think go on Kym, kick some ass, burn the whole place down but it doesn't get that exciting. There's far too much love and hugging for my liking, as well as the arguing. Where was the misery I was expecting?

You just want the wedding all over, so that you can get back to the story, but it never works out that way, there's always another speech just around the corner.

We learn little about Kym, who looks like she's had a colourful past, a seriously baggage laden one but little is elaborated on. When the film starts, she appears clean of drugs and sober, so you can't even reconcile her as an addict. One of her first moves is to get off with the best man, whom she also met at a rehab meeting and I wonder at one stage if she'll kick things off by jumping the groom but no, that would be far too interesting.

Because we learn little about her, there's no reason to like her, feel sympathy for her or even really to hate her. The same can be said of the other characters, who pretty much all come over as unlikeable and self absorbed. It makes you wonder why the groom, a seemingly nice guy called Sidney, wants to have anything to do with them.



Then there's the arguing, two bloody hours of it, which never seems to lead anywhere. Interestingly, Rachel is about to become a doctor of psychology, but she seems to have no insight into the psychology of her own family.

Debra Winger plays the sisters' equally estranged mother, who has chosen to turn her back on the family and to block out her guilt over the death of their youngest child, Ethan. Ethan died whilst in Kym's care, in a car accident, after her Mother engaged her drug addict Daughter as a babysitter. Truth is, she probably left Kym in charge so that she could slope off for a quickie with the man who is now her second husband but they didn't bother filming that bit, their loss and ours.

There's also some inconsistencies, Kym and her mother have a fistfight (nearly exciting that) from which the mother appears without a scratch, whilst Kym takes off in her car, crashes it into a large rock but later we see the car towed away without a mark on it...

Then once the wedding is over Kym simply goes back to rehab. It was such a disappointment; it had so much unrealised potential.



The film would be nothing without Anne Hathaway, who puts in an exceptional performance but she was really the only thing worth seeing. That's not quite fair, as there were other good performances but they just weren't as pretty as her. As a film though, it could have been disturbing, thought provoking, edgy, controversial... but it was none of those.