A man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: a man, like any of us, who is unable to stop time. We follow his story, set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the 21st century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man’s life can be. The film tells a grand tale of a not-so-ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.
In his transient loveliness, the star’s character is rewarded with the company of an equally radiant woman. Or three. At first, when young/old Benjamin is a grotesque-looking abandoned newborn, he’s taken in by a kindly New Orleans nursing-home attendant(a tender Taraji P. Henson) who loves him as a son. Later, before he and Daisy meet up again in adulthood, the hero learns about sex and desire from a wise, worldly lady(Tilda Swinton, never better). By the time his love affair with Daisy crests, the pair are equals, and as a couple of blooming lovers, Blanchett’s limpid performance rises up to meet Pitt’s
Every scene is crammed with detail, from the nooks and crannies of the settings created by production designer Donald Graham Burt and the century-bridging costumes by Jacqueline West to the faces of the main cast and countless extras. Alexandre Desplat’s score provides lovely and unobtrusive dramatic support. Fincher and lenser Claudio Miranda shoot mostly in deep focus images to maximize the information in every frame, and the depth of the blacks they achieve shooting on digital is extraordinary.
In all his physical manifestations, Benjamin is a reactor, not a perpetrator, and Pitt inhabits the role genially, gently and sympathetically. Blanchett’s Daisy is the more volatile and moody one and, after bluntly revealing the selfish impetuousness of Daisy’s youthful self, the thesp fully registers both the passion and insecurity of the mature woman.
Henson, as Benjamin’s surrogate mother, and Swinton as the calculating adulteress, are wonderful
Fincher spends 13 minutes short of three hours telling this unique man’s life story, and the time goes by easily, with no sense of dawdling, waste or indulgence. The film evinces a sure hand that maintains narrative confidence, steadiness of tone and a mature awareness of the temporal nature of life’s opportunities and the fleeting quality of happiness.