The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008)

Brad Pitt gets a shot at Oscar glory as Button, born an octogenarian and given away by his horrified father to grow up in an old folks' home, getting physically younger while his mind works through childhood. So there opportunity's artificially engineered to show acting chops by going through all the ages and asking us to look beyond the perfectly chiselled features and sparkling eyes. Does he succeed?
Pitt is by no means bad: as a screen persona he's always likable but he really only gets compelling in his doofus or nutjob roles, and this is neither, though thankfully it's no Meet Joe Black either. It's more that the course plotted for the character's life doesn't afford much room for expressiveness, being at first physically and mentally constrained, and then weighed down by witnessing too much death and decrepitude, emphasising his apartness.
It's also seriously overlong, stretched out by a perceived need to be respectful as well as by the pressure to say something meaningful about the human condition. This can easily end up fatuous.
Yet. There are moments of real poignancy all the way through, which are given a huge helping hand by the fact that it's visually so stunningly assembled. And assembled is the word, rather than just shot: it mixes a faded sepia for the early years to a sudden leap with a bang to visceral rapid cuts for a war scene, before moving through Sirkian garish in the '50s to a surfy glow in the '60s. The strong cast also help to engage with the protagonist who might just be sleepwalking to his destiny otherwise.
Close then, but only a cigarillo.

6/10