It's the damnedest thing. You look into the elderly man's blue eyes behind a pair of old-fashioned spectacles, look at the sweet smile ringed by wrinkles, and you know that's Brad Pitt under there.
But the special effects are so dazzling, and Pitt's performance is so gracefully convincing, that you can't help but be wowed over and over again by "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."
Director David Fincher always has proven himself a virtuoso visual stylist -- to the point of seeming like a shameless showoff at times -- with films like "Fight Club," "Panic Room" and "Zodiac." Here, he truly has outdone himself: He's made a grand, old-fashioned epic that takes mind-boggling advantage of the most modern moviemaking technology.
Fincher's film, based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story about a man who ages in reverse, is rambling and gorgeous -- perhaps a bit overlong and gooey in the midsection -- but one that leaves you with a lingering wistfulness.
Pitt, as the title character, is doomed from the start. He can travel the world and live a life that's adventurous and full, but he never truly can be with the woman he loves, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), whom he meets when she's just a little girl (played by Elle Fanning) and he's a boy trapped in an old man's body.
Eric Roth's script might seem naggingly similar to that of "Forrest Gump" -- which he also wrote -- but it seems more concerned with the transformational power of true love than the gimmickry of an unusual existence.
But neither Benjamin nor Daisy questions the complexity of their situation: They merely make the most of it, in ways big and small, for as long as they possibly can.
• In wide release
Additional Information:'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'
Rated PG-13, for brief war violence, sexual content, language and smoking;
(out of four)
