This is a rich one for Be the Hero, because it deals directly with big questions of the meaning and purpose of life. The temptation is strong to critique the film, but as I will continually remind you, this blog is not about film criticism. This is not a review, but an attempt to glean something useful from the story offered up in the film.

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Benjamin Button is, ultimately, about death. But not about death as a horror to be feared, rather it’s about death as the dark backing on a mirror, without which we couldn’t see the reflection of life. By opening the film with the young/old Brad Pitt as an aged man, we begin by thinking of death first – exactly the opposite of how we normally perceive life. We can’t help but feel relief as Pitt ages backward, gradually growing into the impossibly beautiful man that he is. Meanwhile, Cate Blanchette, also impossibly beautiful, ages into the love of Benjamin’s life, Daisy.

Isn’t that nice? Beauty meets beauty, and they fall in love. Am I the only one who finds it frustrating that Hollywood inevitably insists that love is only available to the beautiful, and that beauty is so narrowly defined in that world? But there is a refreshing shift, here, in that each character grows past his or her beauty (albeit in opposite directions), sharply highlighting the concept that physical beauty is fleeting. They are like two ships that pass in broad daylight, but nevertheless must pass one another and continue their life path alone.

This is worth dwelling on. Beauty is fleeting, as are all the other attributes of youth. Benjamin Button has the unique perspective of having suffered through the infirmities of age, so he has unique insight into what awaits Daisy. He has actually experienced something the rest of us only anticipate – usually with fear, if we even allow ourselves to think about the future.

But if we spend the bulk of our youth yearning for the time when we are adult and beautiful (a time which, let’s face it, may never come), and if we spend the bulk of our young adulthood fearing getting old and the bulk of our middle and later years mourning our lost youth, when, exactly, are we living our lives?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button speaks directly to the issue of quality of life – the central theme of my book Be the Hero in the Movie of Your Life. It highlights life as a cycle with, like any movie, a beginning, middle and end. It points out that it isn’t the time we have that is important; it is what we do with that time.

The Benjamin Button Experiment

Try this:

Close your eyes, and imagine you have been aging in reverse, just like Benjamin Button. Whatever age you are today, you will be ten years younger in ten years’ time. Does that feel like good news? What about ten years later? And so on? How would that knowledge change what you do today? Would it? Should it?

Benjamin Button graphically demonstrates that life is short and death is inevitable. But instead of mourning that reality, the film is liberating – reminding us that even a moment can be enormously enriching, and that life is what we make of it. It isn’t about how much time we have, it’s what we do with the time we have.

Remember: victims wait; heroes act.