Lilypie

Friday, February 20, 2009

Reverse Ageing?

I was having another burst of craziness for the week, so went on a movie marathon. Can anyone imagine I watched four shows in just two days? With the Oscar season and all the blockbusters and Best Picture-nominated shows, how can anyone miss out? I do not want to miss the chance like last year when there were so many good shows but I chose to stay home and mope due to emotional problems.

So I started with “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. I have heard this show is like Forrest Gump, and people know anything to do with Forrest Gump will garner my interest. Besides, it is Best Picture material, so the film will be of a certain calibre. Another pulling factor is it is starring Brad Pitt, and I am rather confident of his acting ability more than his looks.

I was a little late for the show so missed a bit of the beginning part. When I went in, the old woman’s daughter was reading from the diary of Benjamin, where he recounted his life story, starting when he was still a young kid trapped in the body of a very old man.

I must say, the makeup was perfect! No one can tell it was Brad Pitt under all the balding white hair, small frame, wheelchair-bound and wrinkled skin. At least we have a glimpse of what he will look like when he is in his eighties or so. Everyone will age, and it makes me wonder just what myself will look like when I am eighty, if I live to that age!

Still, it is a rather touching show on love. The love his foster mother had for him. The love his biological father had for his mother, and how they made peace in the end. The love he had for the one woman in his life – Daisy. How he loved her and his daughter so much that he could only go away so as not to be a burden to them when he started getting “younger”. The love for his offspring – how he worried that she would end up like him.

It is Forrest Gump all over again! Can anyone not tell the similarities? Being born in the American South, being abandoned by his biological father, having birth defects that only a miracle could cure, having a mother who loved him selflessly, loving the one woman in his life since childhood, being roped into the military, having a captain to look after him, having the woman in his life come back to him after a wild life, having a child together, just running and running when they separated, and having a trivial thing as a symbolism for life.

The hummingbird represents the white feather. In Forrest’s case, he had to live on when his wife died, and the feather represented the experiences he had in life, which he had then to pass on to his son. The hummingbird symbolized Daisy’s and Benjamin’s fate, where at least they could be sealed together.

This is the kind of movie where not everyone will appreciate. But it is a really good movie on its own – the storyline, the symbolism, the adventures of the main character, until the ending scene. Daisy passed away peacefully after seeing the hummingbird. Just like how Rose passed away peacefully after throwing the “Heart of the Ocean” back into the ocean. It was as if finally the burden could be unleashed and there was nothing to live on for anymore.

Despite that, I still prefer Forrest Gump! So far, no other show has topped that movie in my list. For a list of top ten favourites (which has since grown to top hundred and still growing), Forrest Gump has still not been toppled. No other movie I have watched so far can ever come close to that.

1 comments:

insta said...

nice article on reverse ageing .

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