by Daniel Hirsh

Created on: December 22, 2008

On December 18, I had the privledge to see a sneak preview this finely polished work of cinema, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.' After watching an interview with Brad Pitt on Larry King the week before, I was excited to see this piece of historical fiction set against the Katrina disaster, something which Pitt and a number of other celebrities have not contributed their time, money, and energy immensely to. Pitt himself has taken part in the construction (and re-construction) of some 150 homes in the New Orleans area over the last two years, and he's not alone. Nicholas Cage, Celine Dion, Dave Matthews Band, and Kevin Smith are among some of the active celebrities raising money, holding auctions, and supporting the home-rebuilding effort to counteract this great national disaster.

So, does 'Benjamin Button,' a story about an 80-year old man-born-infant, help or hurt the cause? How does it compare to movies like it, and is it really Oscar material?

The story begins in a hospital, where an older and quite ill Cate Blanchett has taken solace in her daughter's presence (played by Julia Ormond). Blanchett asks Ormond to find a diary that appears to have been written by Benjamin, as he recounts moments in his life. As the movie progresses, the battering of Katrina outside gets worse and worse, while in the story, Benjamin gets younger and younger.

Writer Eric Roth (who re-wrote the script from an earlier version, which had been adapted to screen from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald) had an interesting idea in setting 'ususual circumstances,' (the Katrina disaster) against historical fiction in which a man is born a withered-up baby who is abandoned by his wealthy father, after his mother dies in childbirth. While fiction has, in my opinion, always played interestingly against historical events, I think it would have been better to have interacted the storm more with what was happening in the story. What do I mean? Well, there's one point in the film where one of the nurses exclaims, 'That storm is going to pass us by.' This could have been counterpointed by a point in the narrative where 'the storm' of Benjamin's illness is something he and Blanchett both learn to accept, however the filmmakers missed this opportunity. With a historical recount of an event that, more or less, is known to the American public, there is little to no variation in this event to play around with. I felt as though by the end of the film, I had seen the water smack against the hospital

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