THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE OSCAR NOMINATION

FILM: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button(2008)
DIRECTOR: David Fincher
CAST: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett




Time is a confusing thing yet it is so simple. It is probably the simplest thing when we perceive it as the ticking of the clock. The ticking of the clock is monotonous with a repeating tick sound but what events occur during this ticking are so random, so confusing, so interlinked and so many. This concept was beautifully dealt with in one of the scenes of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, where Daisy(Blanchett) meets with a road accident. The concept of change is the central theme though. The thought that Nothing is constant except change is the essence of this curious story. Our protagonist Benjamin Button is a peculiar case. He is born as an old man and is ageing reversely. The events that have followed as the after effects of this reverse ageing are very nice and deep but the flaw of this movie is that it never substantiated a reason for the reverse aging. When Clarke Kent can lift cars with his thumb, we have been shown that it is so because of the gravity adjustments of that of Krypton and Earth are dissimilar in Superman. It is so because the gravity at Krypton is stronger and to lift objects there one has to put more effort than that on earth. As the earths gravity is weaker, Kent can easily lift even heavy objects here and so he is Superman. No such explanation of reverse aging was provided, though several attempts were made, but nothing was dealt with conviction.

Performances are unquestionable. Brad Pitt has added yet another brilliant performance in his lustrous filmography. Cate Blanchett too does full justice to her role. Though The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has its moments, it fails due to certain flaws. Firstly, as I said earlier, no explanation of the reverse aging was given. Secondly, the editing was extrememly poor and it becomes an extremely long screen watch which becomes boring at some in between parts also because of a not so brilliant background score. Thirdly, there were some technincal flaws regarding the camera work. Whenever the camera focuses on a light source, some sort of dispersion takes place and one often sees a rainbow on the screen. That should not happen. The director should make sure that one is seeing the movie from his eyes and the cameraman's eyes. Surprisingly, it occurs six to seven times in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Even though the story line is pretty curious the slow screenplay often takes off the curiosity and intrigue at certain points, much unlike any other Fincher flick. Apart from these things, the movie is a pretty decent watch and may put you into some sort of thinking. The fact that even though Benjamin had a boon of growing backwards and it made him so different from others yet he was so similar to them and had to face the same consequences as others do, but in a different way, was well captured. But still if one speaks honestly then this flick does not deserve an Academy award Best Film nomination. It deserved that make up oscar, but certainly not a nomination in the Best Film category. Especially, when all time greats like The Dark Knight, were left out. When Heath Ledger would come to know that Nolan's great has not been even nominated for the Best Film, he would simply open his eyes and with his joker grin would ask, "Why so Curious?"

Rest In Peace, Ledger.