The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

An absolutely beautiful movie exemplifying the transcendental value of Fitzgerald's short story and it's incisive study of life and what it means to grow old - well, in the case of Benjamin, younger. This simple subversion is just so brilliant.

I'm plunged back into an existential crisis.

What the hell am I doing with my life? But what is the point of it all if we're going to die? Why go through all that love and pain? And no I don't the buy the story that we're all here because we're living a life of guilt and that we live in shame so we can go to heaven. If that's the only prerequisite needed to enter a perfect universe, the world as we know it wouldn't exist. The naive sheep don't talk about the other requirements like adherence to certain 'rules' though. Nobody actually follows everything.

Anyway

The movie was slow and painful. Just like life. Love, loss, hope, laughter, and death. Every single moment heart wrenching. Every life fated for something. Every life lived was for something.

And in the end was Death.

I also loved how the movie captured American history in the nutshell - from the post WW1 euphoria right up to the Beetles era, and then ending with Katrina. The centrality of New Orleans exemplifies the timeliness and the importance of context in appreciating the full power of the film. It's something that I'm going to keep thinking about cuz I don't think I really got it yet. Watch out for the clock at the end when the flood comes in though. It was said to have been a requiem to all the deaths during the war, and the desire for the dead to return back to life. for time to go back. maybe it's the same as with hurricance Katrina. absolutely beautiful metaphor.

oh i love the accents as well. There's something so beautifully exotic and distant about it. Something from our recent past, and yet suggestive of so much Black culture and history. Something very seductive.

The frequent recurrence of the storm acted very much like a Wagnerian leitmotif as well. Loved it.

Yet death pervades the entire movie right from the started. Benjamin sees death all around it. People come and go. He meets them at the end of their lives whilst he just begins his. Every moment is painful. Every death, loss. In the end was his, as with his lover.

What is life? love sex loss death pain pleasure happiness melancholy. Shakespeare knew that. So did Fitzgerald.

What am I doing with my life? Every life is one worth living but what for? I need to know.

I need to know.

I keep asking people for the answer and I continually ask myself that as well. But i wish i knew. Or maybe I will only find out in the end, just like in the movies. When I'm on my deathbed.

When that time comes, who will I be with? Who will i remember in those sudden stream of flashbacks? will there be any?

I wonder. And the young don't.