You Never Know What's Comin' For Ya.

I find that some movies...for whatever reason...reach out and touch me more than others. This was the case with what I watched last night. While one person turns off the TV with a "that movie was odd" thought, I ponder it and absorb it. Such was the case of the movie discussed below...

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - High profile movie with lots of Oscar nods. It deserved every Oscar nomination it got!

The story is unusual. It is told in flashbacks....but that is not what makes it unusual. It begins with an old woman dying in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina bears down on the city. The woman asks her daughter to get and read from a diary. The diary is written by Benjamin who tells his story. (This is why the flashbacks are needed.) It begins with his birth on the night WWI ends. Baby Benjamin just happens to exhibit all the traits of someone around 85 years old. His biological mother dies in childbirth and his father, overwhelmed by grief and fear of the unusual baby, abandons him. A woman finds him and takes him in thinking that he will die very soon based on his condition. He doesn't die. Instead, he grows younger day by day. His aging in reserve occurs in the same time frame the other characters aging occurs with forward motion. His adoptive mother works as a housekeeper in a retirement home in New Orleans. This is where Benjamin grows up...among people that look a lot like him in that they are old. His body is old, but his mind is moving at the pace it should have for a child. He may look 70 or 80 something, but he plays with little army men like a 5 year old.

The actress that plays his adoptive mother is wonderful. If I am not mistaken, she got an Oscar nod for this role. The title line of this blog is one she says often to Benjamin..."You never know what's comin' for ya." True words...

Benjamin meets a young girl who comes to visit her grandmother on the weekends. He makes it clear in his diary that she is special from the moment he sees her. She shows up off and on and grows older while he is growing younger. Benjamin also leaves home to seek adventures and finds them with a cast of characters who make for interesting friends, lovers, etc. It is always the girl, however, that draws him back. Her name is Daisy. As you might have guessed, Daisy is the old woman dying as Katrina hits New Orleans.

The story is one of love...love for a mother, love for friends and love for someone so important that time itself is pushed aside for the sake of love.

This movie has wonderful cinematography and captures all the eras between the end of WWI and present day beautifully. The acting is top notch with not one actor being the weak link.

The Oscar for Best Picture went to Slumdog Millionaire. Having seen both, it should have gone to this movie...and I really loved Slumdog.

I would give this one an A edging toward A+. I loved it that much.

To end I would like to leave you with a couple of my favorite quotes from the movie. If you play along with me on Facebook with my movie quote posts, you may get a heads up with the following...

"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. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim the English Channel. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people can dance."

"Your life is defined by its opportunities... even the ones you miss."

"Sometimes we're on a collision course, and we just don't know it. Whether it's by accident or by design, there's not a thing we can do about it."

"You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go."

This one may be my personal favorite...it is written by Benjamin to his daughter...

"For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

Until the next movie...