The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: The Movie
Our Hollywood South game involves this David Fincher movie. While it’s not necessary to see it before playing our game, watching it the night before certainly adds to the adventure.
Movie Recommendation by Agent K
“Youth is wasted on the wrong people!” shouts the curmudgeon to the supposedly young Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life. Similarly, Mark Twain remarked about how unfortunate it is that the best part of life is the beginning and the worst part is the end. It was Twain’s quote that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. With its themes of aging and loss, it is fitting that the movie version transferred the setting from the original Baltimore to New Orleans. Where else would you have a giant clock that runs backwards? And a complacent populace that allows it to loom over the city for the better part of a century?
This story of a man who is born old and ages backwards works for many reasons. One is Brad Pitt finally being rid of the aging makeup (Academy Award winning makeup and visual effects by the way) and emerging not only with wisdom of a long life, but also that gorgeous skin and hair. And jawline. And eyes. And, well, everything. The human condition is that we trade the physical advantages of youth for the wisdom (hopefully) of old age. For a while, at least, Benjamin has both. It’s the ultimate fantasy. The beauty of a CGI-enhanced 20-something Brad Pitt coupled with a lifetime of experience and knowledge of how to spend his remaining fleeting time.
The movie also works because of the setting. Certainly it is visually more lush with the New Orleans fixtures: streetcars on tree-lined St. Charles Avenue, the music of the French Quarter and dinner at Arnaud’s. Even the brick mid-century modern duplex among the grand classical homes on Esplanade Ave seems right because if ever there were a city that contradicts itself, it’s New Orleans. Sadly, so many things here run backwards like that clock… public policy, education, our streets… but that’s another story.
At its heart, Benjamin Button is a fairy tale. From the blind clock inventor who was never seen again after it was unveiled, to the hummingbirds that appear at special moments, to the old-timer who was struck by lightning seven times, we know we are in the midst of a once-upon-a-time setting. While the original Baltimore-based story has the bones, it is the New Orleans filter that makes the fairy tale come to life.
