Time often appears to fade away, dwindling before our eyes and leaving us with the burden of lost memories. However, in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” time does not fly past the characters, since it sweeps them away too, in a journey across various cities and eras meant to reveal as much as possible with regard to the human mind, aging, feelings and endurance.

 

The movie helmed by David Fincher sways back and forth in an attempt to describe accurately the odd tale of a man who ages in reverse and starts life with the physical limitations of an octogenarian just to end it in the tiny and frail body of a baby.

 

Age and time leave their mark on the personas and the actions they produce and have such a strong impact on the impressions generated by the large canvas that one can easily take the passing of time for a character in itself.

 

Based loosely on a 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the film initially shows Benjamin Button, marvelously impersonated by Brad Pitt, as a newborn man in his 80s who causes chaos as soon as he sees light for the first time. His mother dies giving birth and his father, terrified by the dreadful thought of an old child, abandons him on the steps of a retirement home. Thus, Benjamin spends his first years among the elderly, where, surprisingly, he meets Daisy, a six-year-old girl with whom he falls in love.

 

As he ages in reverse and she ages normally, the picture follows Benjamin in his voyage to Daisy’s heart, who, played by an extraordinary Cate Blanchett, eventually tells the entire story on her deathbed.