Thoughts on Patterns and Benjamin Button's Life in Retrograde

During the week immediately post-Christmas running up to New Year there's always a flurry of new movies released just in time to provide talking points at New Year parties. This year we had "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (re-make), "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", "Valkyrie", "Doubt", and a few others.

During the same week snooping reporters will pursue whomever they see as the best prey on their Holiday vacation. This year P/e Obama was trailed to Hawaii, photographed a) shirtless, b) with baseball cap on back to front, c) licking some kind of iced treat.

Another yearly phenomenon, of course, is the emergence of a selection of predictions for the coming year from astrologers, psychics, financial experts, media hacks, and (it sometimes seems like) nextdoor's dog!

All these recurring events can be alternately entertaining and irritating - but one thing the week's pattern underlines, year on year, is that we humans do live largely by habit. Starting from the days when we begged to hear the same bed time story over and over again, the patterns continue to the days we bemoan having to eat yet another turkey dinner at Thanksgiving, and undergo another round of present-buying for Yuletide/Christmas/Hanukkah (etc.)

As below, so above, to reverse a well-worn astrologer's epithet. Sun, Moon, and planets exist in patterned motion also, albeit at very different rates. Motion is always in the same general direction, in spite of retrograde periods, which only seem to represent backward motion to human observers. Motion, above, is actually more akin to a helix, always moving in circular or eliptical cycles while not following exactly the same ground each time.

Which brings me back to "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" - we saw this film a few days ago. It certainly has a curious plot-line, taken from a short story of F.Scott Fitzgerald from the 1920s. I haven't read the story, but understand that the only similarity between it and the movie is the basic premise. A man lives his life backwards, starting in old age, heading towards babyhood.

We enjoyed the movie, though the husband declared it a wee bit depressing. There was a veil of sadness around it for sure, but looking deeper there was also a valuable message, or maybe two, to be gleaned. I shall say no more than that for fear of spoiling the story for anyone else.

Brad Pitt plays the leading character, with Cate Blanchett as love interest. Makeup and special effects are excellent, acting is average to good - not great. The movie is 2 hours 48 mins long. I think it should have either been 12 minutes longer or thirty minutes shorter. There are parts which needed and would benefit from more explanation, and parts which seemed repetitive.

Astrologically, Benjamin Button was living his life from Pisces to Aries, rather than the other way around. I cannot get my head around what his natal chart would have looked like.

Some reviewers saw similarities to "Forest Gump" in the Benjamin movie. These could no doubt be found if one were to go over the screenplay with a finetooth comb. I saw in it more similarity to another story, not yet mentioned as far as I have noticed, to a novel called "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger, also in production as a movie by the way. While there's no time travel involved in Benjamin Button's life story, there are similar encounters with the vagaries of time.

At the very least, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is thought provoking, and it's likely that different age groups of thoughtful viewers will extract different messages from it.