The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

            The Curios Case of Benjamin Button is a movie that definitely was difficult to make since the main character Brad Pitt needed to change drastically throughout the whole movie. Starting as being extremely old to becoming a baby. But also the producer needed to make sure that even though there were different actors acting as Benjamin Button in his different ages they all needed to be similar to Brad Pitt to show credibility. For all the drastic changes the producer used several special effect during the whole movie. The movie even won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 2008. This shows ethos.

            The first scene in the movie to show great special effects is when Monsieur Gateau started explaining why he designed the clock to go backwards. He started explaining that it is like that so maybe that way “so that perhaps the boys they lost in the war maybe could come back and farm our lands…” The visual effect of all the soldiers going backwards and the ones that were dead starting to stand up and live again in slow motion helps the pathos that the producer wanted to create. This special effect helps me literally visualize the scene exactly how Monsieur Gateau was narrating it, and make me feel sad for all the families that had lost their sons, husbands or brothers in the war.

            The main special effect in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s movie is the whole metamorphosis of Benjamin changing from being a very old man to a young man to a baby. The producer definitely did a great job since even though Benjamin was changing drastically trough all the different times of his life, and they needed obviously to incorporate different actors as Benjamin in some of the different ages. Most of the time when they portrait Benjamin as old or as young it definitely looked like as it was Brad Pitt the whole movie acting as Benjamin. With this effect as pathos helped me really get into the movie and feel like I was literally living through Benjamin’s life since all seems so realistic and at some point normal.

            By making the movie as if Benjamin was narrating his own life, but at the same time as Caroline reading the diary, made the movie more realistic, hearing his voice when he was telling his story made me feel like if I was part of the story. Also all the special effects that the producer used that made possible to travel trough time. With all the old buildings and scenes, helped the audience to really feel like you were travelling trough time. All this is possible thanks to the computer-generated imagery as Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz mention in Understanding Movies “now they can be digitally altered with new costumes, new backgrounds or foregrounds, or with a totally different atmosphere, as in the magical landscape” (Understanding Movies, Page 33).

            The ethos of having Brad Pitt as the main actor brings credibility to the movie since he is a really well know actor. Also as logos, since people know that Brad Pitt is a really good actor and likes how he acts more people would like to go and watch the movie. Also in my opinion is a really unique movie since there is no movie similar to it. It is not like a normal super hero movie or an action movie is a movie that no one has done something like it before. So people by watching the trailer would be very curious about it and would be more interested on watching it.