A Film Which Influences

One of the Most Influential Films in My Life

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Stemming from the story originally written by the great American writer Mark Twain and revised by another great American novelist, F. Scott Fitzerald, directed by the world renown filmographer David Fincher, the depiction of a child born old and ages down immediately brings to the profound and curious mind the question of what life would become or can become and or if our perspective of the old and young as we know it would differ from our current one which may or may not be influenced by modern society’s current and seemingly fixed standards.

Benjamin, who was born old on the day World War I was ended with the signing of the Armistice. Immediately, upon seeing the result of a strenuous birth which would eventually cost his mother, Caroline, her life, his father Thomas Button, stricken with the grief of watching his wife gradually fade away, then shortly after becoming stunned by the vision of what he believes to be a malformed newborn infant, seizes him wrapped in a swaddle, runs to the river with the intentions of discarding him, only to be interrupted by a police officer, causing him to flee away into the night until he comes upon a home for the elderly in the advancement of their dizzy years.

Being found by a caretaker who believes herself to be barren, Queenie, Benjamin is soon taken in by her as she and the consulting doctors believes that if he is to die, he shouldn’t die alone and if death is to come to the newly orphaned infant, what better place would there be than a home where death is known to be a frequent visitor.

Benjamin, day to day, defies death, and no only defies it, become stronger day to day, his ailments, those which resemble that of advanced agedness, slowly subsides. It is at the scene in church, when Benjamin is willed to walk by a firebreathing pastor, that the viewer then gathers the conclusions of his condition causing him to age down rather up, as well all do every second.

It is in the house of the elderly overseen by the only mother he knows, Queenie, Benjamin develops his first understanding and respect for the aged, the stories they would tell rich enough to begin an endless wonder, a wonder soon to become in the film the very thing to lead him to wonder beyond the house he has grown down and been cared for when he encounters Ota Benga, a character based on the true story of a Pygmy who was captured near the turn of the 20th century, placed inside of a cage for whites to view as a unique exotic species at the human zoo displayed during the World Fair in 1904, which was also billed as “The Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” a event which attracted some of the wealthiest and most influential figures in the world between its 8 months of exhibiting.

It is seldom to encounter films which utilizes true events inside the fictitious/created tales. [The Curious Case of Benjamin Button] along with another blockbuster hit classic [Forrest Gump] stands as the few select films known by most around the world by very title.

Though Benjamin falls in love with the only woman he would ever love, Daisy, when she was a younger teen, having taken work aboard a tugboat became his first great opportunity to know more about the world outside of New Orleans, a opportunity not lost to him or a second thought.

The restorative nature of travel places inside of us the obligation to lose ourselves to once again find ourselves, open our eyes to things we never truly seen in its full remarkable presence, entertain thoughts beyond any thoughts arises so quickly we suffer moments of doldrum while trapped under the amazing weight, a weight shown strange and mysterious to us because it holds nothing in common with burdens capable of straddling us permanently if left unchallenged. It is in one of his longer stays in a quiet and sparsely populated Russian city blanketed by the presence of snow day to day, Benjamin meets the wife of a British spy, Elizabeth, who in her peculiar formalities, possess a seduction seen almost exclusively amongst middle-age women. While spite may be taken towards Benjamin’s engaging in cuckholding ELizabeth’s husband, one cannot ignore the fact that we can never know what lessons we will encounter that will teach us essentials of human existence, of human happiness. The brief affair between Benjamin and the upper-class Elizabeth brings discomfort to Daisy, who is pursuing her dreams as a dancer in New York, but with a depth of perception, one could determine Benjamin’s confession of love for another woman to Daisy wasn’t reciprocated with betrayal nor hate, rather soon seen as the unexpected twist and toss of life, where one can wind up far from where they ever desired to be, yet find themselves face to face with a greater desire long discarded, surrendered so long before as a fantasy only fantasist living in the dreamworld would only mistakenly entertain.

Benjamin’s return from sea, after suffering the loss of his beloved Captain and close friend, Captain Mike, Daisy visits New Orleans not so long after. True one can see the electricity alternating between them but their lives and maturity are far vast. Daisy was a premadonna ballerina wallowing in the arrogance of being wanted by nearly all who laid eyes on her, viewing sex as many ballerinas come to, as a mere tool to enhance the line of their body and empower them with the confidence a woman usually carries, well-aware of her power and a confidence like that of youth, capable of weakening and conquering almost all men.

During their dinner, their difference becomes more stark, as Daisy speaks of a bigger world in a much bigger atmosphere and Benjamin, happy to remain silent, appreciates all the beauty she has become the epitome of. They are both in love but it is only Benjamin whose life experience has made him much more mature to admit it, reinforced by the experienced of knowing the feeling of love and having have felt it. After dinner, Benjamin unintentionally embarrasses and disappoints Daisy when he refuses her advances, believing if he was to sleep with her then, at that moment in her life, he could fall victim to her perspective of lovemaking being only a mere tool of seduction and not a gift given from one partner to another.

This opinion I reiterate when Benjamin is seen seeing other women, all of whom provided a temporary comfort and loose and artificial surrogates for the woman her truly wants to be with, the one still living the life of a woman enjoying and wanting, at that time in her life, the attention of a large audience, not a single man. Daisy, I believe, fights her love for Benjamin, possibly terrified that to love him would mean to relinquish the dream she had been living, translating Benjamin’s request for her to return to New Orleans to end her career, though she was lying in a hospital bed in Paris after being hit by a car, with at least at hint of her dancing again professionally would never happen.

Daisy would eventually come to accept the ending of her career, returning to New Orleans, giving in to the feelings she felt all her life for him, joining him on long sojourns to the lakehouse left to him upon the death of his father. Benjamin and Daisy return from their lake vacation to find that Benjamin’s adopted mother, Queenie, died in her sleep, a terrible and tremendous loss, his only fortune being Daisy who was there for him while they both grieved for a woman they loved who gave them both the love of a mother.

A very intriguing twist then comes, Benjamin sales most of his inheritance, primarily the lakehouse and he and Daisy downsize to a small and homely duplex and begins to lead a simple and happy life, still aging in different directions, Daisy’s which would take her to an elderly infirm age and Benjamin’s which would take him into pubescent and into childhood. This fact only becomes troublesome when Daisy becomes pregnant and Benjamin worries about how held end up, a burden to Daisy, a father incapable of being a father, and against all of Daisy’s reassurances and his own pull to stay and love her, he sells all his estates and starts accounts to keep Daisy and his daughter, Caroline, who he named after the mother who died bringing him into the world, a woman he eventually comes to believe, had she survived, he would have never been orphaned. On her deathbed, her last wish was that her husband, Benjamin’s father, takes care and protects him, which he does in an initial distant manner.

Believing Daisy to be asleep one night, Benjamin attempts to quietly slip out the door but his departure is discovered and more than likely anticipated by Daisy, who just stares and is stun in hurt and despair, as Benjamin gets on his motorcycle and rides away, sure that his leaving before his daughter was old enough to remember him, would prove a bit more sacrificial and while he is unable to cause hurt to Daisy by leaving her, he spares Caroline such pain.

Caroline, now an adult, reading the journal of Benjamin, discovers that he was her father all along, and suffers a sharp bout of hurt for her mother’s concealing the paternity for so long. But she has to know her father, has to know how the story edges towards its end and in what manner, discovering all of the postmarks Benjamin wrote to her from the many countries he traveled to during every holiday, giving her a joy that even though he left, he was always there and would wish to be there in spirit, something made insurmountably impossible by his progressing condition, which ages him down to a young boy suffering from dementia.

Benjamin’s very endeavor to prevent Daisy from having to care for him becomes so. An old lady herself, she moves into the very home Benjamin and she grew up in, Benjamin alongside her, where he dies in her arms as an infant.

If one can take anything from [The Curious Case of Benjamin Button], it’s the perspective of life being much more spatial than most would believe, extreme and mysteries possibilities, how even the bizarre and hideous paths can open up to something so substantial, it can continue to nourish a dream and develop even the vigor to give life an infusion, a jolt of belief, the first some may ever encountered in the entirety of their lives.

Dontrell Lovet’t