So here is a review/ musing on B.Button; if you haven't seen it, it does contain some spoilers.
Benjamin Button is a curious movie on many levels, as it awakens our curiosity about some pretty big questions in life.
If i didn't go to the cinema again for the next 2 years i would be quite happy pondering the many themes in this little gem of a film.
Based on 1921 short story by F.Scott Fizgerald we meet our protagonist, Benjamin as he is born to a dieing mother, not as a brand new infant, but with the aged face & gnarled body of an old man.
Too much of a shock for his father to deal with, thought to be suffering from perhaps some rare infant senile disease the child is left at an old peoples home. And this is where the improbable story & fantastic truth of Benjamin Button is slowly revealed.
As we know the movie magic of computer generated images can do some pretty amazing things to bring to life with special effects things that were once generated by our imagination in the reading a book.
I haven't read the story so i am quite happy, in the hands of a good director to be visually suprised.
The paradoxical premise of this story is that a person is born OLD and AGES young.
What kind of life would this person have?
F.Scott Fitzgerald would have us imagine such a person as he transforms from an old man growing backwards with the advancement of time into a child. Director David Fincher with the help of some amazing film technology and editing, does it for us visually with Brad Pitt as B. Button.
Leaving aside all the many delightful twists and turns in Buttons life, featuring an entertaining array of minor characters, one of the beautiful things in this movie for me at least, is the evolution of Benjamin's life philosophy and how he reconciles his fantastic predicament.
There is a certain FORREST GUMP-ishness to Button's character, being neither hero nor anti hero. He's not fighting for any cause, or to overcome the dark forces, he is not at war with himself or his inner demons. There is no real villain in the tale to speak of, the only antagonist you might say is TIME itself. Benjamin doesn't seek agrandisment or specialness for his condition, he doesn't take advantage of people he meets along the way, he doesn't bemoan his condition, or resist his fate, but is one who is in FLOW with life, however bizarre its unfolding, who accepts himself totally, who doesn't judge his fellow beings, who is remarkably at peace with himself throughout his tumultuous journey, which as he grows younger, as everyone else is growing older, is naturally filled with the death of many loved ones.
Is this film a tragedy then?
No more or less than life is a tragedy or comedy, it all depends how you view it.
This is Buttons teaching to us i believe; its how you respond to life, how you react to what happens.
As Queenie his adopted mother says to him:
"You never know what's a comin for ya!"
We are reminded of this via Mr Daws 7 anecdotes on the chances of being struck by lightening, which in his curious case was 7 times.
Benjamin learns early on to accept the chance nature of things JUST AS THEY ARE and doesn't waste too much time over thinking about what might be comin or what is goin from his life.
He lives in the NOW with a limited amount of attachment to most things going on around him, except Daisy whom he meets when he is still an old man and she a young girl.
Daisy becomes Buttons love interest, played by the always remarkable Kate Blanchette, she is of special significance in this story and here we must play to our own imagination as Fitzgerald intended,
What would it be like to fall in love with someone as you were growing younger and they older?
After their lives had diverged for solo adventures Button & Daisy reconnect, and as they do, they realise that they have met in the middle as they are effectively the same physical age.
It is here that they forget their fates for awhile and live like a normal distracted couple in love.
But time never sleeps either forwards or in reverse.
Daisy is aging, while Button is youthing.
As the reality of the situation catches up with them by way of the most human of vanities:
'Would you still love me when.... i get wrinkly skin..... or what about when i get acne?'
If you remember in the film The Highlander the newly initiated Scottish immortal, Connor McCloud found himself in a similar predicament as he outlived his wife.
When Daisy gets pregnant they both encounter a new dimension to life as their daughter, happily born normal, is yet another more painful personal reminder of Benjamin's fate. It is a supreme act of compassion i think that eventually motivates Button to leave Daisy so he wont be a burden to her as he turns into a child. But time plays its influence on everything, and soon a disoriented Benjamin returns and is taken in by the remarried Daisy to be cared for as a young boy and finally as a helpless baby.
Here the paradoxical end of life is so like the beginning, as helpless infants in a cot at the start of life, we become in time the same on our death beds. We finally have to give up what ever illusionary control we thought we had throughout life.
Shakespeare captured this fate full conclusion to ageing in that wonderful 'Seven Ages of Man' monologue from As you Like It;
"That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth,sans eyes,sans taste,
sans everything."
'Sans Everything' of course is the final giving up - giving up our bodies - in death - and it is to this universal eventuality that this movie speaks the clearest.
Whether we are growing old or growing young, unlike the massive clock turning and ticking in the opposite direction in the train station to bring home the fallen in war, time is taking us all towards our final exit from this battle field.
Shakespeare said at the beginning of that monologue:
"All the world a stage,
And all the men and women
merely players;
They have their exists and
their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts"
Playing many parts in life is another theme running throughout the film. With the mostly inebriated Captain Mike stating;
"You gotta do what you are meant to do"
In his case becoming an artist - a tattoo artist, as well as a
natural philosopher who's musing on the aerodynamic wing patterns of the Hummingbird are the movies symbolic coda to infinity & eternity.
Where time is not.
Hummingbirds are a symbol for the stopping and reversing of time, as they are able to hover in once place and even fly backwards. As Capt Mike reveals their wing pattern traces out the shape of an 8 tilted 90 degrees, which is the mathmatical symbol for infinity.
I love these little diversions into the meaning of life that a movie such as Benjamin Button can give us.
Perhaps not so much the meaning of life that was done by the Monte Python bros ,-)but more a direction we might follow into how to Live Life embracing all its weirdness and uncertainty.
And here in lies a still deeper meaning to this film which i am still pondering, that has to do with the Buddhist notion of Impermanence or Annica as it is called in Pali, the language of the Buddha.
- EVERYTHING CHANGES
Benjamin in a very human moment while in love has a pivotal line to Daisy:
"I was thinking how nothing lasts, and what a shame that is"
To which she replies
" Some things do..."
Well what do you suspect that might be ?
To which i am still pondering.....in the after glow of this delightful movie.
For me this movie deserves a second viewing on DVD to come up with say 7 key philosophical aphorisms on life uttered by the characters that would be of value in either in the act of aging or youthing. I am indebted to a film critic Shen Shi'an of Buddhist Channel for reminding me of some of the dialogue.
The line i remind myself occasionally of and is not in the movie is a Zen approach to Living;
'Learn To Die Before You Die'
Meaning if you want to learn how to die learn how to live, and if you want to learn how to live, learn how to die. No matter what your circumstances its about not becoming attached.
Which leads me to a closing little gem from Capt Mike:
"You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to
LET GO....."
- and go see this film.
,-)
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