The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (Music from the Motion Picture) is the soundtrack album to the 2008 film of the same name, released by Concord Music Group on December 16, 2008. It was released in physical forms as a two-disc album, with one disc containing the film's original score composed by Alexandre Desplat, and the other consists few classical songs as well as dialogues featured in the film. The David Fincher-directed film, written by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord is loosely based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and stars Brad Pitt as the titular character, alongside Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Mahershala Ali, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas, and Tilda Swinton. Desplat recorded his score with an 87-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Sony Scoring Stage. The score received critical acclaim; being often considered as one of Desplat's best film scores, it was nominated in the Best Original Score category, at major award ceremonies, including Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, British Academy Film Award and Critics Choice Award, amongst several others. However, Desplat lost the award to Indian composer A. R. Rahman, for his musical score composed for Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Development While composing the film's music, Desplat had taken inspiration from the short story, in which Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is born an old man and goes through his life aging in reverse. Hence, he created a "palindrome-like structure" for the music, where the themes can be played in the same way forward as they do in reverse. Desplat added that he wrote the film's music with the subtlety referring that "it would take the viewers backseat to the movement of the picture". In an interview to National Public Radio, he said "If I were to show off too much about my reverse thing, it would be disconnected from the picture and the story, and we have to be really, completely overwhelmed by the story before everything."