"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a magical and moving account of a man living his life resoundingly in reverse.

Loosely based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story from 1922, it delivers top-notch moviemaking in every department. Most impressive is the digital breakthrough that allows Brad Pitt to change so convincingly from very old to very young, placing his face upon the forms of stand-in actors. 

There is no abiding message. Just the wistful observation that life has a way of taking its own path, sometimes a backwards one, and we do have choices in how we travel it. We are all swept by errant winds, which are made manifest through the film's framing device of the 2005 arrival of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

As the city prepares to evacuate, an elderly woman, played by an almost unrecognizable Cate Blanchett, lies in a hospital bed, facing her own imminent departure. But first she has a story to tell her adult daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond), who waits by her side.

A battered diary is produced, and Caroline commences reading the account of Benjamin Button, a man born in New Orleans in 1918, on the night that World War I ends.

The fantasy element in Fitgerald's short story does not begin to suggest the urgent drama and romantic fatalism that the filmmakers have so strikingly brought to the screen in the movie version. Fitzgerald's story is little more than a plot gimmick. Yet the film transforms this gimmick into an epic tale that contemplates the wonders of life -- of birth and death and, most of all, love.

Nominated for thirteen Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor (Pitt) and Best Supporting Actress (Henson), and winner for Art Direction, Makeup and Visual Effects, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a film with the epic scope of a crowd-pleaser but the subtlety of an introspective character study. It is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 166 minutes. 

 As part of The Smith's "Academy Showcase" film series, all seats for the Friday morning screening are $3.