Long and lyrical . Truly magnificent performance

Long and lyrical
Saw The curious case of Benjamin Button this Sunday. Hadn't heard great reviews about the movie. But like any intelligent person, I chose to figure it out for myself. Once in the theatre, I was in for a long, slow but rythmic and lyrical experience of almost two and a half hours. What if we were born old and grew young and died when we are babies. Surrealisitc? Well, that's the basic storyline of the movie.
Life of Benjamin is interconnected to a clock which moves backward and is created by a desolated father who is hopeful to get his son who has been killed during a war. He is born as a old man-child and has been discarded as a monster child. Nevertheless, he continues to lead his super weird yet normal life as a wonderful lady decided to take care of him.
The movie traverses Benjamin's journey. BTW do check out Brad Pitt in his youngest avtar- too hot to handle! Anyways, he falls in love twice, once as an old man who is 17 years old and once as a charming (super hot) young dude who is about 40-50 years old. Cate Blanchett (his second love interest) is just about ok in the movie. But she cant be blamed much as the movie belongs to Pitt. The scene that I enjoyed the most is where a priest thinks that he is making seven year old OLD man walk and dies of a heart attack with the excitement.



Truly magnificent performance
Saw The Reader on Thursday night and had no idea that I would be so f****** mesmerised by Kate Winslet who plays Hanna Schmitz. I think she has outdone herself (won the oscar for this one). However, let me warn you at the outset that if you are planning to watch it in a theatre in India, please be ready to get irritated as so many scenes are cut inspite of the fact that it has an adult certificate (WTF)! I wouldn't go into the story of the film, you can read the synopsis here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reader
There is something heartwarming about Hanna (former guard who worked during the Nazi regime in Germany) being illiterate. She has a desire to be read to. The film opens on her reader who is a 16 year old boy who has a torrid "love" affair with Hanna. The expressions when she is being read to are simply mindblowing. The scene where she is asked to give a sample of her handwriting during a court trial is my personal favourite. Hanna refuses and accepts the blame which leads to life imprisonment!
I also like the scene when her young ex-lover Michael meets her when her life imprisonment is about to get over. He removes his hand when she keeps her hand over it. Complicated poignant scene. Michael's predicament as a young lover who is always trying to understand Hanna's weird mood swings is interesting.
The larger issue of her getting a life imprisonment for locking up jewish women in a church during a fire twenty years ago when she was working as an SS guard during Nazi regime is worth pondering over!

PS: Both the movies are book adaptations. While Benjamin has been adapted from F Scott Fitzgerald's short story (READ THE FULL STORY HERE: http://www.readbookonline.net/read/690/10628/), Reader is adapted from Bernhard Schlink's book The Reader.