Mary Arline

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Yesterday I did indeed go see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and I enjoyed all 166 minutes of it. It was a beautiful story about unconditional love and devotion, and about things happening in their own season. It's one of those movies that sort of defies genre categorization, and I like movies like that because they present an intellectual challenge and invite interpretation.

It won 3 Oscars on Sunday, for Art Direction, Visual Effects, and Make-up, the latter two unquestionably well-deserved, although I am bemused by the extent by which they have become almost the same thing in recent years. Not that that's a bad thing; if that's what it takes to keep the stories coming, then I'm all for it, and this is definitely a story that probably could have been presented without extensive CGI, but it probably wouldn't have been as effective. I felt that all the aging (or un-aging, as the case may be) effects in the movie were very skillfully and gracefully done.

I respect Brad Pitt as an actor because he seems to be one who tries to maintain artistic integrity and doesn't allow himself to be typecast or pigeonholed, but as a result he's played a lot of roles in which his character is, for lack of a better word, creepy. Creepy at best. So it was nice to see him play a not-creepy character for once. Well, he was still kind of creepy what with the whole digi-man-boy aspect of it, but the creepiness came more from the situation and not from the content of the character's soul.

( Philosophical musings with vague spoilers )

Current Mood: moved