My Benjamin Button Fast - week 1 (done)

Last weekend, I decided to stop listening to my Benjamin Button soundtrack both at home and at work, in preparation for the May 5th DVD release. It's been a week since I've been Benjamin Button-free and quite frankly, it's tough.

Despite the campaign attempting to paint Benjamin Button as a Forrest Gump redux, I found this film to be among the more compelling fare offered by an American filmmaker in the last 20 years. Sure, film reviewers glossed over the fact that the film cover the span of a man's life and marvelled at the special effects executed in this film, but their critiques seemed short-sighted on so many levels. I read that reviewers were disappointed that the movie wasn't more emotional; my question to them is whether they can discern between emotional and manipulative. Another issue is the lack of active viewing on the part of these reviewers; I questioned whether they really watched the film, since I haven't read anything close to the conclusion that I arrived at; more than anything, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an intricate puzzle involving Benjamin's origin and how the people who created him and subsequently abandoned him (whether by choice or by death) impacted his opportunities in life and the choices he had to make, more than the people who actually loved and raised him.

It was the fastest moving 2 hr 46 min film I ever watched -- so much so that I watched it numerous times in the theater. And when merely watching it wasn't enough, I bought the soundtrack, which made the replaying of the film in my mind more vivid. The monotonous paper-pushing I do during the day went by much faster, but I had to stop listening to the soundtrack because memories of the film was too close to the surface and I was afraid that I would ruin things for myself.

Home entertainment is a beautiful thing; maybe if the more vocal critics would watch this film, beyond the studio-subsidized screenings, without a snark-seeking agenda, then they could probably see that a character archetype that was historically used as a pawn received a redemption, of sorts, that was long overdue.