As befits Desplat's style, there is no big sweeping theme, but a gently lilting waltz that is presented in numerous guises throughout, perhaps most engagingly for Love in Murmansk where a cimbalon makes a slightly unexpected, but welcome addition to the palette. It's an interesting tone that Desplat maintains; Love in Murmansk is clearly slightly romantic, but he hints at the emotions rather than stating them outright. Elsewhere there's melancholy, snippets of humour (Mr Gateau and Little Man Oti) and even some more lively passages such as Mr Button and the tense Submarine Attack (a sequence in the film that never seems to be quite as visceral as one expects it to be, despite seeming so expertly staged and filmed). The Accident is another beautifully judged cue, building in a way that you don't realise its building until it abruptly concludes. Of course, Desplat doesn't do anything so vulgar as action music in a film such as this and his ability to conjure momentum and excitement with the minimum of fuss is typically impressive.
As could be said for the film itself, the album seems to run a little long. Thematically, it's a little repetitive (when you have near enough three hours of film and an hour of music, the score can afford to be more repetitive than wall to wall music for 90 minutes) and doesn't jump around tonally a great deal. Having said that, as with the film, Desplat's music is beautifully understated and the thematic material is very strong (as usual) and the cues themselves are still varied in the way the major melodies are treated. For those who like their love and loss in broad strokes, Benjamin Button may be slightly underwhelming and it certainly isn't a score to dazzle the listener. Again, if you want tunes to sob to, stick to Silvestri's Forrest Gump (different, but equally fine in its own way) However, it's hard not to be drawn into Desplat's beautifully etched musical portrait.
Rating ~ Total Time ~ 59:59
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is taken from a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald and tells of a man who is born old (albeit a baby with old age thrust upon it) and gets more youthful, eventually reverting back to a proper baby. The film diverges significantly from the book and stands more of a film inspired by the book, but that's certainly not a complain. It's a delightful, albeit somewhat sobering, film (and not nearly as much like Forrest Gump as some people have claimed - they are both fictional life stories, that's more or less it) and Brad Pitt shows he's not only immensely hot, but also an actor of range, even if his performance as an old, young man is effects enhanced. David Fincher is not the director one would guess having seen the film, but the music is unmistakably the work of Alexandre Desplat and few composers in 2009 would be better suited, Thomas Newman being the only serious rival. In fact, Desplat's lightness of touch and delicate orchestrations aren't a million miles from Newman, even if one would never confuse the two, notably because Desplat's themes appear more than once or twice.
