Christmas First

For the first time in my life, I think, I went to a movie on Christmas day! Steph wanted to see Brad Pitt's new movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which opened today, and Jeff agreed to come along. Jim wanted no part of the crowd, so we'll watch it again on dvd later. He wants to see this, especially since we spoke at length about its merits.

Don't worry, no spoilers here. This is visually a walk back down through old time periods, both through New Orleans over the years, but also through three generations, our children's, our own, and even our parents, many of whom are gone already. Those of us in this generation, ie. the sandwich folks: caught between caring for elderly parents and still helping out the young adult children, will wince at some of moments, such as when Julia Ormond sits and sits with her mother in the hospital, short on words, with nothing to do but read aloud, and again most poignantly when Cate Blanchett switches to caregiver at the end.

Fortunately, there is some explosive (literally) comic relief. The movie audience will go uproarious on you when an elderly resident of Benjamin's home gives no less than seven hilarious visual images, steeped in sepia to highlight his very old memories, interspersed throughout the second half of the film. This is the part of the film that tugs at your heartstrings in the worst way, but this feeble man distracts us with his innocent popping out, almost in shotgun fashion, seven silent vignettes of the times he was struck by lightning. I'm still belly-laughing.

I love, love how in tune Benjamin seems to be with those around him: despite his abandonment by his father, he is able to bring him home to die on Lake Ponchartrain at the summer home. The brief affair, and this is not the best description of the relationship, and later recognition of the character Elizabeth, played by Tilda Swinton is just so "in the now"--isn't that how our memories are? We don't seem to have ever aged, but why are those around us looking so gray, weaker or getting up there? A theme evident in this section is "You're never too old to change," and much later, a wiser Swinton bears witness to that lesson learned through her experience with Benjamin. A second theme of "things don't last" in the film is made urgent with the use of Katrina as a backdrop, yet the home Benjamin grew up in lasted almost throughout the movie and was comforting to the viewer to see its architecture during the various points of Benjamin's journey through time. Cate Blanchett just isn't Cate Blanchett in the figure of an old woman gone grumpy and throaty at the end of her days. Yet, there she is lying there breathing those sometimes indecipherable words in her hospital bed with her left hand clutching her blankets, throwing out all those "darlin's" and "baby's" that honey-tongued Southern folks let flow so so easily. Contrast that with the smooth-faced beauty of the dancer she portrays in an earlier segment of her life and you'll be entranced by her performance.

Bring tissue! Go expecting to see the saga of a life enrichened yet its stumbling points magnified by the curious circumstances of an unusual birthright. It's a story that I would expect from F. Scott Fitzgerald as it portrays the 1920s, 30s and 40s so eloquently. Though it has been modernized to carry through into the year 2005, and though it is set in New Orleans instead of Baltimore, Fitzgerald's voice whispers to us posthumously. I give it two thumbs up.

Read/hear an interview with the writer, Eric Roth: http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp?aid=10285&tcid=1