Friday Night at the Movies

I don’t typically blog about movies I have seen. Most of this space has been reserved for books and travel. But I’ve been thinking a lot about the last movie I saw, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Maybe it was the cinematography, the romance, or the imaginative idea of an infant born suffering the limitations of old age and gradually becomes younger. They all played a part. I loved many of the scenes, like I did in The Woman with the Pearl Earring. Many of the movements seemed like paintings on a canvas. Of course, it is also amazing what computer effects can do.

But here’s what I found so refreshing. This was a story. This wasn’t a hodgepodge of special effects, with the faint lines of a narrative. This was a narrative that one could get lost in. I like how a CT reviewer put it—this was “technology placed completely in the service of story and character.” I became so engrossed in the story line that computer wizardry was hardly noticed.

In an age so dominated by technology, could it be we are losing story, even in our own lives? Could it be we are running from twitter to voice message to e-mail to text message, so much so that there is not much of a narrative being written in our own lives?  Are we becoming a jumble of special effects? I don’t know. I just know that I find story in movies a welcome reprieve.

Of course Hollywood tends to romanticize life, creating an illusionary world, and it does so in this film. There are parts of the love relationship between Pitt and Blanchett that don’t square with reality. Her narcissistic past and his previous affairs do not seem to have any impact on their eventual relationship. But life does not work that way. Still, it is nice to see a story of two people whose love keeps drawing them back to each other, and love that eventually is strong enough to love through life’s infirmities.

What hits you in this film—especially if you are pushing 60, is the inevitability of aging and mortality. Impermanence is the constant theme of this movie, as it is in life. There is this one moment in the movie when Benjamin and Daisy meet in the middle—he is going one direction, getting younger; she is going the other direction, getting older. For that one fleeting moment, they look into the mirror, and you can sense the pain that will eventually come. At least we all go the same direction, though sometimes you wish life did go backwards, that the older and wiser and more seasoned you became, the younger the body becomes to facilitate the internal.

Last week I stood next to the body of a woman I have gotten to know in my church. She had just died moments earlier, and it was time. She was in her 90’s, frail, and scared to let go. And maybe she was hesitant to cross over out of feelings that when she has the most to offer, her body won’t let her. It all leads to a certain feeling of melancholy, which both this film and life itself create. But unlike the film, that offers no hope in the end, we have this hope of life on the other side, where the body will get neither younger nor older, and despondency will be utterly absent. I’m hoping we all lock in at about 25.

Comments

[Brian Larson]

I also enjoyed this movie. The saying "youth is wasted on the young" comes to mind. It seems to me that the more we age, the more our lives become about substance (at least they should). I recall C.S. Lewis' description of the after life in "The Great Divorce" (I think) and his description of how "real" the outskirts of heaven were. Everything was so real that even the grass hurt the feet of those walking on it. The longer people stayed in this environment, the more they became accustom to it and began to develop substance of their own. So the question seems to be, as we travel this journey of life, are we drawing near to God and becoming people of substance?