Benjamin Buttons

Benjamin Buttons doesn't offer much satisfaction in post-viewing rumination. In the end, there's just not that much too it. The character is only interesting because he's aging backward and he's very good looking. Otherwise he's kind of a dullard.

But watching it was an absorbing experience, largely because New Orleans looked so very beautiful in the film. But it was also visually compelling to see Brad Pitt emerge from old age in to youthful beauty. He isn't my fetish of male beauty--that would probably be Johnny Depp. But still, I couldn't look away.

Also, even if the film isn't really saying much of anything, it does make fresh some things we all know too well, about how change is constant and we are ephemeral, how we lose the ones we love and even ourselves. Every pair of lovers at the peaks of their existences are going to fall into decline, and they ought to know it; but the film brings special poignancy to that awareness by creating a pair who are declining in different directions.

Aging backwads would have its benefits. If you reached your peak of health and beauty late in life, you would probably appreciate it and make more of it than the average twenty year old. Benjamin's end is not appealing, but if you have to lose your mind and be totally dependent on others, it might be better to be in the body of a small child rather than an octogenarian, because you'd be more appealing to your caretakers.

And in other news, bar review class starts again tomorrow. I'm totally unemployed and would be in a panic if I had the energy for it. I've been studying and have slowed down on my writing. But being here, with my family and its ghosts, has given me some new threads to work with.