The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' Starring Brad Pitt

The Waiter Rants: Steve Dublanica is anonymous no longer | Main | In books: Michael Chabon wins again, Julia Child was OSS.Brad Pitt meets Fitzgerald in 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," about a man who is born old and ages backward, is coming to theaters in December, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

The film has recently been shown to a test audience on the Paramount lot (note to self: stop for those people with clipboards asking whether you'd like to go to a free screening). Two capsule reviews have hit the Internet: One viewer loved the film; the other thought it was a little long.The movie departs from the original storyline in a couple of significant ways. The time frame has been moved up: Benjamin Button is born a few decades later than 1860. The setting seems to have been transplanted to the South rather than its original Baltimore. And it appears that instead of being born a fully grown old man, Benjamin Button is a tiny baby with an aged face (a little creepy, but somehow more believable that the issuance of a fully-grown adult from a pregnant mother).

Most important, the film seems to have a tragic love story at its center, as Pitt's Button gets younger while Blanchett, as his wife, grows older. Fitzgerald's original wasn't nearly so nice.Fitzgerald seems to be commenting on the superficiality of Benjamin Button and his wife. He falls for her beauty; she for his stability. Those are the very things each loses as they grow older (and younger), and they're distinctly unkind and ungenerous to each other as their rift grows.