The old man is hot.

The greatest romance movie since "Titanic": David Fincher's brilliant film "The Strange Case of Benjamin Button" is an Oscar favorite. The deeply moving epic of a man, a man comes to the world and getting younger, was himself one of the most difficult births in Hollywood history.

 

An old woman sits on a chair and holding a baby in her arms. They considered it carefully and weigh it gently until it closes the eyes. It will finally find peace after a long, exhausting and extremely exciting - yes, life. Because the baby is in truth a man who once considered old man came to the world and over time has been getting younger. Now he wants the woman who for decades has loved everything about, in his last sleep.

From the bizarre life of a Altgeborenen of the daily sight in the mirror fewer wrinkles in his face and more and more hair on his head discovered, but knows that one day he died in the cradle will find the film "The strange case of Benjamin Button ". He does this so poignant and moving than almost any other Hollywood production of recent years. You see the disciples Be the hero and learns what it really means to be old.

By David Fincher ( "Seven", "Zodiac") directed film, based on a narrative of the U.S. writer F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1922 is based, is considered one of the favorites for the
Oscars, on 22 February in Los Angeles awarded. He was nominated in 13 categories? more often than any other film this year. In Fincher's film tells of aging, of death, of grief and loss and that even the youth is not for wimps.

Brad Pitt plays the title hero of 1918 immediately after the First World War in New Orleans is born. Buttons mother died during his birth, his father can not bear the sight. So the boy Benjamin aged boys and orphans to spend in the nursery Altenheim. Then he falls into the girl Daisy, which - after the appearance - his granddaughter could be. When he wiedertrifft years later, she is the woman he has matured and become a whole man. Increasingly elated he hurries through the world, while Daisy (now played by Cate Blanchett) is older.

Seductive original idea

In Hollywood, there was hardly a film project, which is older. More than half a century, the birth pangs lasted until Benjamin Button which saw the light of the canvas. Already in the forties, the writer tried to William Faulkner in a movie adaptation of the story of his colleagues Fitzgerald, of the novels "This side of paradise" and "The Great Gatsby" had become famous. But then stopped the studio Warner Bros. project. Since Hollywood producers always toying with Fitzgeralds seductively original idea. Directors like Ron Howard or Steven Spielberg worked on the fabric, stars like Tom Cruise or Johnny Depp were in the main role in the conversation. But the film never took concrete shape.

Photo: Warner Bros.
Video: JKR

The doubts about the feasibility predominated. How many actors would probably need a man in all phases of his life represent? And would the audience at the end really believe that they are one and the same figure is? Only the possibilities of computer animation, and distributed these concerns shifted Brad Pitt in the situation, Button as old and young men to embody. The digital make-Star missed the first face fissured landscape and magically him later the skin of a Babypopos on the cheeks.

Is "The Strange Case of Benjamin Button" is the rare case of a film, until the age of its technical feasibility had to grow into it? Perhaps, but the real reason why Hollywood, the world's youth obsession, so often on this substance fell to him again to drop, it could be quite different: Fitzgerald in its history shows that the dip in the fountain of youth not Skip to happiness is.

The author sarcastically tells of a man who is a biological oddity as the changeling in ETA Hoffmann's fairy tale "Little Zacher called cinnabar, or the traveler Gregor Samsa in Franz Kafka's story" The Metamorphosis ", the one morning in an armored beetle wakes up. As Hoffmann and Kafka Fitzgerald developed from the tension between his nature from the beaten heroes and their social environment a ludicrous social satire.

From the grotesque to the Melodrama

In Fitzgerald's Button to the World 1860, just before the start of the American Civil War. As the father buttons shriveled baby sees, he paints it, as it would be with him through the city to go. Even with the idea of a slave market to happen, he hopes for a "dark" moment, Fitzgerald writes, "his son would be black." He would prefer a "nigger" as a begotten Miss shape.

VIDEOS ON FILM

Photo: Warner
Video: Warner

The curious case of Benjamin Button
Trailer and Film Clips

Film clip: "He looks so like my late husband"
Film clip: "You come to me not as an old man"
Film clip: "Simply beautiful"

Fitzgeralds favorite word is "ludicrous." From the grotesque Fincher developed after the screenplay by Robin Swicord ( "The Geisha") and Eric Roth ( "Forrest Gump") an exciting melodrama. Fitzgerald makes mostly a fun fact that his hero is younger, while the people around him senescence; Fincher makes this constellation, a cinema of great feelings.

If Brad Pitt at the end as a breathtakingly beautiful young man - even brighter than in the film "Thelma & Louise" in 1991, with his career as a woman swarm began - the aged Daisy faces is no triumph, but bitter tragedy: Benjamin Button would at the moment everything that he could once again only a few years older.

Precise and cynical sharpness Fitzgerald describes how his hero is precisely why a special sense developed that the aging process decomposes the passion, because he is younger. When he was about as old as his wife, namely mid-30, he noted that they "blutleer in moments of excitement" and "pitted the eternal inertia which each of us eventually overtook that have quietly by take possession of us. " Against this sober realization Fincher films from all his might to.

The director sees the age in the face in the deep wrinkles of the skin, the veins burst of the eyes, the loose hair. But he can talk of nothing and nobody to rob the belief that behind a large, deep and, yes, eternal love may be.

Ironically Fincher, the director supposedly cold presence of the American cinema, in fear and horror and disgust in his element and seemed to be with "Fight Club" (1999) a cynical masterpiece created, now turned Hollywood's greatest love story since James Cameron's "Titanic." But only a notorious anti-romantics like Fincher could probably succeed in a film that is so touching is not to be maudlin.

So near and yet so far

As Benjamin and Daisy each other meet for the first time, they are infinitely far away and very close. He is still a verhutzeltes males, they are still a young girl. He is not much bigger than they are. She sees him, as they discover behind the weathered face the child's game companions. At night she secretly read under a table in a book. Eye to eye they sit opposite, and suddenly appears between them not only the size difference, but also the difference in age repealed.

Indeed, the film is shaped by the conviction, true love is that two people over a lifetime at eye-level encounter. When the adult Benjamin to charming beautiful mature woman and Daisy wiedertrifft in a park on a nightly stage dances for him, he looks admiringly at her high. She wants to seduce him, but he gets it with the fear to do.

THE STRANGE CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (USA 2008)

Original title: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Director: David Fincher
Screenplay: Eric Roth, Robin Swicord
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Elias Koteas
Production: Paramount, Warner, The Kennedy Marshall Company
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Running time: 166 minutes
Start: 29 January 2009

Official Website

As Daisy then some years later in an accident almost losing a leg in hospital bed, and Benjamin is forced upon them herabzublicken, the audience feels that her love of the balance being threatened. "The Strange Case of Benjamin Button" is one of the most subtle and most memorable films that Hollywood ever about the equality of the sexes is turned.

No place is looking for Fincher in his film as often as the staircase, on which the people gradually converge can until it is finally at eye level facing each other. In this film, it is a nightmare for the rest of humanity look up to have a curse them from the top down view, and the pure luck, other people are simply in the eye to see.

As Benjamin and Daisy get together some time in bed, she asks him if he will still be love if it was old and shriveled. He thinks back to and ask: Will they still love him if he is back in the pants and do fear the darkness have? In the perhaps most beautiful moment of the film, the two together in front of a mirror and see themselves. Daisy has just said that they are now roughly the same age would need. He sets his arm around them and want them for this moment for ever remember.

When Benjamin is full of juice, his father is very old and even with crutches can barely walk. Benjamin lifts him up and carries him to a jetty by the sea. From there, the two look into the sunrise. When near the end, it was necessary to release Fincher lets his hero at this moment to say from the off. Soon after the father dies. Later in the film Benjamin sits with Daisy in the same place. Again, the sun on? but the audience already thinks the twilight of this love.

What it means for a man, old to be so well understands button like no other, because the age he knows himself better than all other people. Benjamin, in the course of his life are often released, and each time it hurts more. If this movie does not go to the heart, which has none.