OK, so many of my Christmas week/weekend hours were spent inside movie theaters, it seems....
Before we saw Valkyrie, we spent Christmas night viewing the Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's short work of the 1920's was crafted into a 3 hour movie (by the amazing Kennedy/Marshall machine) delighted us. The trailers had done their job in semi-explaining the reverse-time situation of a little baby born old....and how the story dealt with Baby Benjamin's life line. What the traliers failed to capture was the beautiful dignity of all life...old and young.
I needn't get into the arguable pro-life angle on the film, as most who view/will view Brad Pitt's work would flinch to think that his work could be so tailored. Forget about the co-confrontational perspectives of abortion and simply consider how the script and actors brought true dignity to the birth of the disfigured baby, the death of his mother, the attempted homicide of the new-born babe by his father through drowning - and the ultimate life-long sacrifice by a woman of color - a color different than the baby's.
It is a common statement by all of us that life is valuable - all life. Babies are precious - even if they arrive, as Benjamin Button did, uglier than ugly and with a face that even his father could hate.
The use of the film's setting in an old people's home was masterfull. Old and young, all life is valuable - and each has a story to tell....no matter how young, no matter how old.
This was a story well told.
Grow young as you watch it in the theaters, grow older as you consider the message to you and yours.
Den
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