From the chic bleak corpses of Seven to the oil black blood glistening on teeth in Fight Club, David Fincher is a director who has always been able to make the cruel beautiful.  So, when tackling his first 100% life-affirming film it is unsurprising he makes the whole curious affair look sumptuous.

On the surface, a love story based on a short slice of F. Scott Fitzgerald flim-flammery hardly seems suitable subject matter for Hollywood’s chief purveyor of gloom and violence.

Yet, its themes of death (Zodiac), regret (Fight Club’s lament for lost opportunities) and the inexorable passing of time (Seven’s seven-day countdown) are right up Fincher Alley.

And although Forrest Gump’s Eric Roth is on scriptwriting duties, Fincher and Pitt reign in any potential "life is like a boxa-chocolates" overkill.

Beginning on the day The Great War ends (“a good day to be born”), Benjamin's case covers the universal themes of life and death and love and loss with a fairytale feel, taking in World War Two, 50s bohemia, Beatlemania and even Hurricane Katrina as daughter Julia Ormond reads Button’s diary to her dying mum Daisy (Blanchett) while the storm clouds gather over New Orleans.

Pitt’s Button may not rub shoulders with the century’s elite like Hanks’ Gump did, but he does get rid of the pain and infirmities of old age early on before embarking on a life of adventure where his body develops with experience.

A sexual liaison with Tilda Swinton’s aristocrat in pre-WWII Russia, and active service aboard a tugboat, climaxing in a terrifying encounter with a U-boat, are but two of the memorable sequences with which Benjamin Button enthrals the audience.

Death is always spoiling the fun (Ben’s time at the OAP home is marked by empty seats), but at its heart the film is a bittersweet romance, Button and Daisy crossing over for a brief time.

Unusually for Fincher there are no bad guys here (Flemyng as Pitt Sr. lives a life or regret for abandoning his son), and the real enemy is Time, the ultimate avenger.

Characters attempt to stop it passing (literally in a touching vignette with Elias Koteas as a blind watchmaker), but its relentless march dominates everything (Fincher even slowing it down and repeating it to audaciously depict the blind chance that ends a chapter in Daisy’s life).

Master of the Invisible Effects Shot, the director employs bleeding edge technology to cut and paste Pitt’s face onto other’s bodies and digitally restore Pitt and Blanchett’s early twenties’ glow.

Already being hailed a masterpiece by US critics, time (as always) will tell if this is as wondrous as it appears now.

Whatever, in these troubled times, when even a director of nightmarish musings feels the need to lighten up, you could do worse than see this rich, rewarding, polished diamond of a film.

Rob Daniel