L'Étrange Histoire de Benjamin Button

Un film magnifique et émouvant. Pitt et Blanchett sont géniaux. David Fincher s'est surpassé. Si cela ne durait pas trois heures, je le regarderais sans cesse. (03/03/2011)

Tourné avec une maîtrise élaborée, mais trop droit et TROP LONG comme une flèche volant vers la cible. De plus, fabriqué à partir d'ingrédients que nous connaissons depuis longtemps. Benjamin Button m'a touché vraiment au cœur avec sa première partie magique, pleine de bienveillance sincère et de tours éblouissants, qui font de Brad Pitt un meilleur acteur que celui qu'il devient plus tard dans la réalité. Mais le reste est une sorte de ouate tirée par les cheveux qui n'a pas grand-chose à offrir, ou offre ce dont l'histoire de Benjamin n'a pas besoin. Dans l'ensemble, beau film, mais pas le film de l'année. C'est dommage de voir David Fincher se consacrer à un divertissement aussi doux. Paradoxalement, c'est son œuvre la moins intéressante et discutable. (01/02/2009)

After a second screening, I was able to fully appreciate this moving meditation on life and death. It just confirmed for me the well-known truth that great films are to be enjoyed in the darkness of the cinema, with quality sound and image, and that it is for films like this that the big screens are made. The film flew by so that the 2 and a half hours felt like half an hour, I lost track of time and enjoyed the hypnotically captivating symbiosis of image and music. Then the emotions surfaced naturally, I would have set a lot of the thoughts expressed there in stone, and I guess it's true that the more you have experienced and the more you realize the transience of time, the more the film speaks to you internally (my mother was bawling like a baby). Cinema magic. Thanks, David. (09/02/2009)

David Fincher has better stuff under his belt, but Benjamin Button is a memorable film nonetheless. It’s a sentimental tale about life and death that in 160 minutes portrays a completely ordinary story affected by unusual circumstances. But there’s power in simplicity, it allows the film to reveal the meaning of all the symbols that fill its runtime, delivering by the end an emotional load that mixes sadness, melancholy and fatality in precisely calculated proportions, one that will bring tears to the eyes of the more sensitive viewers… The firm director’s hand and the dreamy atmosphere are only secondary reasons to grant it 5 stars. Gorgeous. (31/01/2009)

This film is an honest piece of craftsmanship, into which Fincher has put a lot of his unmistakable ideas, and yet they don't really attract attention and thus leave enough room for the story. The story itself could actually be told in a moment. It’s not that I was bored - the director can tell a story engagingly enough for that, but this is his first film that completely missed the mark for me emotionally. Maybe that’s because of the fact that Cate Blanchett just doesn't "fit" in the film for me and she flutters a bit behind the excellent Pitt, and also because of the lengthy runtime, which is just too long given the amount of plot. Some people obviously think that a perfect style can carry a film. I give it a weaker four stars. (03/01/2009)