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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a film that people will love or hate. It's a lot like an old Dylan album. You love it, or you hate it. If you love it you hang on the words and the moments. If you hate, you don't 'nothing' it, but you forget it pretty soon after a listen. As with Dylan, Benjamin Button has a few rules. You have to be in the right frame of mind when you watch it and everything from age, outlook, and even time of day can have an impact on what you take away from the film. A lot of things are that way, but The Curious Case of Benjamin Button almost sets the standard on this philosophy.

The basis of the storyline isn't a complex one. Benjamin Button, played by Brad Pitt, ages backwards. Born horridly disfigured; he starts his life in the physical shape and appearance of a 90 year old man. From there he ages backwards moving towards becoming a child as his life changes.  After being born as an old man Benjamin is abandoned by his father in front of a Nursing Home and left to being cared for by the nurse of the home, Queenie. The movie follows his life closely from his childhood growing up in a Nursing Home, to what amounts of his teenage years spent on a tugboat.  And through all of these points in the story his romance with Cate Blanchett's character Daisy remains a constant.  Benjamin has to deal with watching everyone in his life grow older in appearance while he gets younger every day. But really that's a very small part of the story. Watching him get younger only magnifies the dozens of themes that can be taken away from the movie.

The story of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the most-crucial part of the film, as it should be, but Pitt's lead in the film is amazing. He plays an elderly man without hint of real comedy and his emotions and key moments in the film come off flawless. Blanchett's performance is also spot-on as Daisy. Daisy is always the more-vain woman in the relationship and this constant cockiness is played by Blanchett perfectly. Both characters are backed up in spades with great work by the makeup artists providing yet another dimension to captivate an audience and add another layer to an amazing film.

The Curious Case of Benjamin comes packaged in Paramount's Criterion Collection and is full of bonus features and stellar commentary, but the film alone is worth the purchase. Movies like this one rarely come around. Movies that have multiple themes and capture not just the imagination but thoughts on philosophy from it's viewers. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of those films. It's a movie with heart but a movie that people will love or hate. Benjamin Button is a movie that captures the imagination AND the mind.