Critical Review
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

INTRO	PLOT 1	PLOT 2	DIRECTOR & ACTOR	ABOUT MY SONG

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The story is bookended. The daughter (Caroline) has been looking over the journal entries. The appearance of unrelated characters is explained at the end by this dialogue in Benjamin's VO. This baffling philosophy is intended to make sense of the random events that characterize Benjamin's life and world travels. It is equivalent to the pearls of wisdom that Forrest Gump espouses--"Life is just a box of chocolates."

Scene 290

BENJAMIN BUTTON’S (V.0.)
“Along the way you bump into
people who make a dent on your
life... Some people... get struck
by lightning...”

“Some are born to sit by a river.” etc. etc.

The THEME is revealed as Queenie takes in the orphan. Taraji P. Henson deserves the Oscar nomination.

Scene 26
QUEENIE (CONT'D)

You may be as ugly as an old
pot... but you still a child of
God...

A series of scenes illustrate Benjamin's life. Characters pop up and disappear. Benjamin joins a tugboat crew, and makes his way to Russia, where he learns about love from Tilda Swenson.

 

His crew is conscripted into service in WWII, and he is the lone survivor. At this point the viewer becomes aware that this movie is Forrest Gump the Sequel. It's miraculous how Benjamin finds himself at the center of every major event in the history of the 20th Century.

The mother's delirium is set in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Through the rain pelting the window DAISY spies a hummingbird. The metaphor is understood to be the spirit of Benjamin. That's what she calls it. I can't reconcile the metaphor of the hummingbird and Dr. Gateau's clock. A hummingbird's wings fly backwards?

Then who was the bird that Benjamain witnessed on the deck of the battleship?

Is it the canary in the coal stack?