Benjamin Button: life seen from the perspective of death

How to make someone perceive, at once, all the misery and limitations of the human condition, which are inevitably reflected in each and everyone's existence? How to make someone understand, suddenly, how much sadness is in being born and in dying, in seeing those others around you disappear, or contemplate the sunset of your existence, when all you have left in your life is memories?

If people could see the end of their existence, if they could previously contemplate, in a clear and detailed way, their years of old age, diseases and suffering, then death, their life would probabily become a nightmare. Perhaps many of them wouldn't even want to live anymore. But the instinct of self-preservation is stronger; We all know that we die, that before dying it is likely that we suffer long, that we live alone and deserted, without a purpose, just like our parents, who in their turn will disappear, almost unnoticed, before us …However, something in our minds doesn't let us imagine these things too clearly. Something always urges us not to dwell in a sterile exercise of imagination, or rather to look at the beautiful side of life.

Only in a state of intense confusion, individuals can acquire the opening they would need to be able to understand their condition and the entire scale of their existence. Such a confusion may also occur by simply reversing poles, such as in “The curious case of Benjamin Button”.

The action is completely predictable: an man is born old and, as time passes, gets younger, until he becomes a baby. Certainly, the story is not for those who read a novel or go to a movie to find out “This is ĂŽntâmpla”. In “The curious case of Benjamin Button” it doesn't matter, de fapt, what happens and what doesn't happen. The character of Benjamin Button has nothing out of the ordinary and might even seem quite plain, and the events inin factfe don't bring, în fond, anything too exciting. All that matters is this reverse perspective, unusual, but extremely suggestive, offered by the destiny of this individual, in his long way from the young old man to the old child. Virtually, the image of the child and the image of the old man overlap, and we are forced to accept them in the same person; in the absence of the regular representation of temporal linearity, we realize that not only life, but also death is contained in each individual.

The stages that the main character goes through may seem quite hard to digest, precisely because they create such a contrast between his appearance and his true age: the monstrous child that grows at an asylum for old people, the old man who begins his sex life with a prostitute, the teenager who visits his teenage daughter, the baby asleep at the breast of an old woman who once was his lover. All these send us more than a superficial message from the category “spiritual age versus biological age” or “living the moment in spite of time passing”. Actually, at the end, exhausted by the journey, we understand that age and the passage of time no longer have any importance; what is important is only what we choose to do with what we were given in this life.

The film abounds in images so poetic that they seem unreal, landscapes bathed in a strange light, under a strange sky. Emotions seem to be consumed somewhere in a remote plan, without too much ups and downs. Events and dialogues take place at a constant pace, slowly, almost monotonously. A risky approach to the patience of the viewers but, I think, successful. The greater the merit of the film: instead of giving us “anesthethics”, it makes everything look like seen through the dusty glass of distant memories, and the more sensitive we get to it. After all, the story is told by Benjamin Button himself, in his diary. And the film manages to create the exact sensation of looking behind, of nostalgia mixed with resignation and serenity, of a time that is not coming back, of moments that cannot be repeated, of joy lost in the shadow of memories, leaving behind nothing but an undefined perfume. Both moments of happiness, and those of sadness, seem washed into the same type of blurry emotion, that of the man for whom there is no future, but only past, and who is moving not among real people, but among memories of people…One more reason to reflect on what time takes away from us, but also on what it cannot take.

“The curious case of Benjamin Button” is not a movie for those who are afraid of old age, death or themselves, who are used to avoiding spiritual challenges or who, simply, are not prepared for a trip outside their own ego. But, certainly, it is a movie for the contemplative ones, for those inclined to philosophy, for those who have the courage to step beyond the comfortable limits of their habits, no matter how difficult, lonely and even sad may be the reward that awaits them. Because the latter, more than they will appreciate the director, or the actors, or the script, they will appreciate the journey itself…

Similar:

• To live your life
• Second hand life
• Aki Kaurismaki
• Dialogue with Leonard Oprea about the condition of the writer-artist
• Art and sacred

Other published in: Art, Highlights, Spirituality

Other published H2O