Read Patrol’s review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button here.

ALEXANDRE DESPLAT means his tricks to be secrets. Otherwise, “you might lose some of the discovery, the charm, and the taste,” he told NPR earlier this month. The most significant flourish in his score for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button—a “palindrome” phrase that plays forward, then backward—is undetectable underneath the movie’s timeless majesty. Every bit the invisible “glue” Desplat says he aimed for, the gentle score only announces itself after Brad Pitt has uttered his final line (“And some people … dance”), the screen has gone black, and the full weight of the past three hours hits. As the main theme gets its most defined iteration under the closing credits, it becomes clear that every second of Benjamin Button’s effectiveness was resting in its powerful hands.

Alexandre Desplat
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Rating: 9.2/10
Concord Records, 2008

The album version is a 60-minute overview of the 26 complete pieces Desplat composed for the film and submitted for awards consideration, and loses none of the original’s hushed elegance. The movie’s painfully lovely title theme is represented throughout (“Postcards”), as are the reverse theme (“Alone at Night,” “Love Returns”) and Benjamin and Daisy’s bittersweet love theme (“Meeting Again”). “Dying Again,” one of the soundtrack’s most moving pieces, brings the movie’s wrenching final scenes to life with every listen. The three themes each play an equal part in shading its deep melancholy—all unfold at the gentle andante pace of a story that’s sad but by no means tragic. And the occasional joyous variation (chirpy flutes in “Love Returns,” for example), give Benjamin Button its moments of light-hearted, childlike magic.

Subtlety doesn’t preclude elaborate texture, which Desplat’s score is always hiding beneath its glassy surface. The intensity of his details and their flawless relationship to the picture are his most deadly weapon. Trimmed to a jolty two minutes on the disc, “Little Man Oti” particularly shines, flirting with the African heritage so closely intertwined with the jazz of Benjamin Button’s setting. It features softly-tapped bongos, a playful vibraphone, solo violin, and staccato flute for an atmosphere not unlike, if you need a pop music connection, scenes from Iron & Wine’s celebrated The Shepherd’s Dog. Desplat described it appropriately as “chamber music,” a more intimate work played by a small instrumental ensemble.

It’s in both the small, strategic scuffles and the sweeping offensives that Desplat overwhelms his 2008 competitors, from the obnoxiously blustery The Dark Knight to the delightful, winning Slumdog Millionaire. Where even the year’s strongest scores fall to convention and excess, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is sharp, potent, and devastating. Nothing else in its category stands a chance.

This double-CD version of the soundtrack includes a disc of period jazz songs also featured in the film.