The Curious (and Sad) Case of Benjamin Button

My wife and I finally had the chance to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on DVD this week (okay... we know it's a little late, but what do you do when you've got two young children and have no opportunity to go to the movies?).

It's an interesting movie, rather slow moving at certain points. But really, in the end the movie should be called The Sad Case of Benjamin Button. What is valued as something precious by many - the elixir of youth - actually turns out be a curse for Benjamin Button. What at first seems attractive and ideal - starting life old and ending it young - actually loses its appeal as we see the effects played out in the life of Benjamin Button. Not only does he face a lonely existence most of the time, he is forced to cut himself off from the woman he loves and the child he has fathered. This was highlighted most clearly in one scene where the late-fifties Benjamin comes back to visit his wife and teenage daughter in their dance studio, except he enters not as one with grey hair and wrinkles on his face, but as a young teenager with the budding glow of youth on his face. It was at that point that I understood why Benjamin had made the choice earlier to leave his family, despite loving them - there was no way he could carry out his role as a father and provide the sense of normality to his family.The other sad scene in the movie is at the end, where he lies as a infant baby in his lover's arms, who by now was probably in her eighties - he's lost his memory, lost his ability to speak, and as you look at Benjamin spend the last few moments of his life as an infant baby - you feel an overwhelming sense of sadness instead of joy.

Which brings home the lesson for me - no use having the elixir of youth when you have it alone, while everyone else around you grows old with the seasons of time. The elixir in such a case becomes a poison, cutting you off from everyone you love and every relationship that matters to you. Which brings home yet another point - what really matters in life in the end is not growing old (or young in this case). What really matters is who you grow old with. It's the relationships that matter - being able to say 'I love you' to the people you love, holding their hands (no matter how wrinkled their hands or yours are!), parenting your children as they grow up - these are the things in life that make life precious, not the elixir of youth, but rather what I call the elixir of life itself.