Brad Pitt plays a man who ages in reverse in David Fincher's 2008 fantasy drama The Curious Example of Benjamin Push , which tells the story of Benjamin's life from the foreign circumstances of his nascence in 1918, and ends a little fourth dimension later on his death in 2003. Based on the short story of the aforementioned name past F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button follows its unusual protagonist on journeys around the world, and the catastrophe montage summarizes what he has learned from a life lived backwards.

Written by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, The Curious Instance of Benjamin Push is only loosely based on Fitzgerald'southward story, borrowing the central conceit of someone being born an old homo and condign younger over the course of their life, just adding a lot to the story as well. In particular, the film expands upon Benjamin Button having a great love of his life, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), whom he first meets as a young girl. Over the course of the moving-picture show, Daisy grows older and Benjamin grows younger until they are finally able to be together when they both appear the same historic period. However, later on Daisy gives birth to a infant daughter Benjamin realizes his condition means he won't be able to be a begetter to her, and he decides to go out.

The Curious Example of Benjamin Button is told through the framing device of Daisy asking her girl, Caroline (Julia Ormond) to read Benjamin's diary to her as Daisy lies dying in a hospital bed, with Hurricane Katrina raging outside. By reading the story, Caroline comes to learn the truth about who her father was. The motion picture ends with Benjamin finally dying as a baby in the flashbacks, and Daisy dying in the present day. So what does the ending reveal about Benjamin, and what does it all hateful?

Was Benjamin'south Aging Linked To The Clock?

Before the story of Benjamin's life begins, the dying Daisy first tells her daughter a story about a clockmaker called Monsieur Gateau (Elias Koteas), who was deputed to build a clock for a new train station. K. Gateau was left distraught when his son was killed in the Commencement World War. When the clock was finally unveiled in 1918, the gathered oversupply were stunned to come across that it was running backwards. Mr. Gateau explained that he designed information technology that fashion in the hope that time itself might showtime turning backwards, and that all the boys who were lost in the war might come home.

At that place's an obvious link between the story of Thousand. Gateau and the story of Benjamin Button, who is built-in on the night that the war ends: November 11, 1918. Before long earlier Benjamin reaches the end of his life, the backwards-running clock in the train station is replaced with a digital clock that runs normally, meaning that both the clock and Benjamin's lifespans are roughly the same. Still, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button exists in the genre of magical realism rather than full fantasy or science fiction, and therefore Benjamin Button's status and the clock are never explicitly said to be linked to one another. Rather, the clock and Mr. Gateau'south wish are instead a metaphor for what Benjamin'southward life represents: a wish for the return of youth.

Why Benjamin Develops Dementia Equally He Becomes A Child

Towards the end of The Curious Case of Benjamin Push, Daisy is reunited with Benjamin subsequently a menstruation of several years. At present bearing the appearance of a 12 yr-old, he was living on the streets when Child Services picked him up and brought him back to the old people'south home, since the accost was in his diary. Moody and balky to being touched, Benjamin is apparently developing dementia, and struggles to recognize Daisy when he sees her again. Viewers may be dislocated every bit to why Benjamin is development a disease that commonly only afflicts old people when he is growing younger every 24-hour interval, only the respond lies in the exact nature of his crumbling.

It'due south truthful that most of the afflictions that come up with old age - from arthritis to cataracts - were present in Benjamin when he was born. However, only his body ages backwards, whereas his mind ages forrad. That's why when he was growing upwardly he had a childlike curiosity and naivete, an was mentally the aforementioned age every bit Daisy. Benjamin's particular course of dementia may also exist tied to the fact that, as his body turns from an adult into a child, he is mentally deteriorating in the reverse of a normal child's mental growth. In Fitzgerald'southward story something similar happens; though Benjamin is born fully-grown and talking, in his terminal years it'south said that his memories "had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind every bit though they had never been."

Why Benjamin Dies As A Baby

Following Benjamin Button's life from its start to its logical endpoint, some viewers may have been expecting the movie to conclude with some kind of horrifying reverse-birth. Instead, Benjamin only grows younger and younger until he is physically a newborn baby. One day, when Daisy is holding him in her arms, he looks up at her ane concluding time and so dies. Since he was born with the advent and ailments of an 84 year-one-time man, his lifespan is defined by the condition of his birth. Fitzgerald's story ends in a similar mode:

"He did not remember. He did not recollect clearly whether the milk was warm or cool at his last feeding or how the days passed -there was simply his crib and Nana'southward familiar presence. And and then he remembered zippo. When he was hungry he cried - that was all. Through the noons and nights he breathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and darkness.

"Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved higher up him, and the warm sweet scent of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind."

Since Benjamin develops many of the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, his death might be attributed to dementia, which in its terminate stages causes a person to lose the power to coordinate bones functions like swallowing or animate. A less grim and more poetic interpretation of Benjamin's death is that he had simply come to the stop of his natural life.

The Existent Pregnant of The Curious Case of Benjamin Push button'southward Ending

The somewhat surprising bulletin at the centre of The Curious Example of Benjamin Push button is that Benjamin's foreign status doesn't really matter. As Roth explained toCinema 24/vii, "It doesn't brand any difference whether you alive your life backwards or forward - it's how you lot live your life." From the very beginning of his diary, Benjamin conveys that the circumstances of his birth and death - as bizarre as they might be - are the to the lowest degree significant parts of his life. Ultimately, after all, he goes out of the world the aforementioned way he came in: "alone and with nothing."

Though Benjamin's backwards aging certainly helps him to make the most of his later life, the final montage of the important people he has encountered throughout his life sends a message that opportunities don't stop when youth does. Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton), who abandoned her dream of swimming the English language Channel after failing to practise so equally a immature woman, finally succeeds when she'south in her sixties. Daisy is distraught at the loss of her dancing career later her blow, only in her afterward life starts a trip the light fantastic studio and teaches other girls how to trip the light fantastic. Benjamin'south begetter, Thomas (Jason Flemyng), lives with the swell regret of having abased his son, but manages to reconnect with him and is able to tell Benjamin the truth earlier he dies.

Fincher said in an interview withFilm Annotatethat he made The Curious Case of Benjamin Push button "with the idea in heed that it showed the fallacy in the thought that youth is wasted on the young." To his surprise, some of the people who saw the moving picture came out of it with the opposite thought: that information technology proves youth is wasted on the young. This may merely be the result of the movie telling a universal story with an Everyman graphic symbol at the center of it. Audiences bring their own ideas and experiences into the film, which in plow influences what they take abroad from it at the end.

More than: Read Screen Rant'south Review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

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