HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Drama
It’s December 1918. The Great War has just ended and Roger Button is a happy man. As he walks – nay, prances – through his Cornish fishing village, Roger stops to tell various townsfolk that today is the day! Today is the day he will become a father. Oh, joy unbounded! He will have a son! Surely, Roger will have a son!
Roger is so consumed by his happiness that he fails to notice the odd things occurring around him, such a stream running backwards and the water rising upwards, into a watering can.
When he arrives at the birthing centre, Roger’s joy is dashed. He has, indeed, been blessed with a son. But the boy is an old man – somewhere around 70 – dressed in a three-piece suit and a bowler hat and accompanied by a walking cane. The geriatric man sits on his bed with his arms wrapped around his legs and his chin resting on his knees. Despite just being born, he can speak and knows his own name. But he’s awkward and uncertain.
The midwife assures Roger that this is his son. Roger Button feels nothing but revulsion for the aberration he has helped create.
Roger and his wife resolve to hide the old man in their attic. He is so old that he must die soon. Surely. And then he can be forgotten. When Roger asks his wife what they should tell the villagers, she says, “we tell them the truth: no baby was born today”.
Over time, however, it emerges that Benjamin Button will not die soon. If anything, he is getting younger. After 10 years, Benjamin finally escapes the attic and embarks upon his extraordinary life. A life which involves adventure, friendship, love, tragedy and children of his own.
But how can anything be permanent when life is lived in reverse? When you start your career as an apparently seasoned veteran, but know nothing about how the job is done. When a young woman falls in love with your middle-aged face, but you end up being younger than her. And when, one distant day, your aging son will carry you in his arms, like a newborn baby?
What My Eyebrows Told Me
I have neither read the original F. Scott Fitzgerald short story nor seen the Brad Pitt / Cate Blanchett movie. I had no idea what to expect from this story about a man who ages in reverse.
I was, therefore, delighted by this endearing, but somewhat melancholy, production. Re-imagining the tale so that it is set in a Cornish fishing village and, for a time, on the high seas, was clever because it added to the mythical element of the impossible premise. The haunting Cornish folk music enhanced that tone.
I thoroughly enjoyed meeting this Cornish version of Benjamin Button and seeing how he coped with a lifelong plight, which was not of his making. My eyebrows remained in a High Arch long after I left the theatre.
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