The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

PLOT

In August 2005, Daisy Fuller is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina approaches. She tells her daughter Caroline, about blind clockmaker Mr. Gateau, hired to make a clock for a train station in 1918. When it was unveiled, the public was surprised to see it running backwards. She reveals that Mr. Gateau made it as a memorial for those lost in World War I, including his own son. Daisy then asks Caroline to read aloud from Benjamin Button's diary.

On the evening of November 11, 1918, a boy is born with the appearance and maladies of an elderly man. His mother, Caroline, dies soon after childbirth and his father, Thomas Button, abandons the infant on the porch of a nursing home. Caretaker Queenie and cook Mr. Tizzy Weathers find the baby, and she raises him as her own, naming him Benjamin. As the years pass, Benjamin physically blends in with the elderly residents but has the mind and curiosities of a child. He eventually transitions from a wheelchair to crutches and learns to walk. He befriends resident Mrs. Maple, who teaches him to play piano, as well as a visiting African Pygmy named Ngunda, who teaches him to look beyond the physical.

On Thanksgiving 1930, Benjamin meets seven-year-old Daisy, whose grandmother lives in the nursing home and they connect instantly. Later, he accepts work on the tugboat Chelsea captained by Mike Clark. Thomas Button introduces himself to Benjamin, but does not reveal his true identity. In autumn 1936, Benjamin leaves for a long-term work engagement with the tugboat crew and travels around the world. He sends Daisy hundreds of postcards, and learns that she was accepted into a ballet company in New York City.

In Murmansk in 1941, Benjamin becomes smitten with Elizabeth Abbott, wife of a British trade minister. Their affair eventually ends, leaving Benjamin heartbroken. That December, the United States enters World War II. Mike volunteers the Chelsea for U.S. Navy service, and they are assigned to salvage duties. They find a near sunken U.S. transport and thousands of dead American troops. The culprit, a German U-boat, surfaces and fires on the tugboat. Mike rams the submarine and the resulting explosion sinks both. Most of the crew perishes save for Benjamin and Rick Brody, who are rescued the following day.

In May 1945, Benjamin returns to New Orleans, reuniting with Queenie and learns that Mr. Weathers died. He reconnects with Daisy and she attempts to seduce him but Benjamin refuses and she departs. Benjamin visits with terminally ill Thomas and learns the details of his birth and family. Thomas gives his button manufacturing company and estate to Benjamin before dying.

In 1947, Benjamin visits Daisy in New York unannounced, but departs upon seeing she is romantically involved. In 1954, Daisy's dancing career ends when her leg is crushed in an automobile accident in Paris. When Benjamin visits her, Daisy is amazed by his appearance, but, frustrated by her injuries, she tells him to stay out of her life.

In 1962, Daisy returns to New Orleans and reunites with Benjamin. Now of comparable physical age, they fall in love. Queenie dies, and Benjamin and Daisy move in together. In 1967, Daisy, who has opened a ballet studio, tells Benjamin that she is pregnant. Their daughter, Caroline, is born in the spring of 1968. Believing he cannot be a proper father due to his reverse aging, Benjamin sells his assets, leaves the money for Daisy and Caroline, and leaves to travel alone during the 1970s.

Benjamin, physically a young man, returns to Daisy in 1980. Now married, Daisy introduces him as a family friend to her husband and Caroline. She admits he was right to leave; she could not have coped otherwise. She later visits him at his hotel, where they have sex and part once more. In 1990, recently widowed Daisy is contacted by social workers who have found Benjamin, who is now physically a pre-teen. When she arrives, they explain that he was living in a condemned building and was taken to the hospital in poor physical condition, and that they found her name in his diary. Benjamin displays early signs of dementia, so Daisy moves into the nursing home in 1997 and cares for Benjamin for the rest of his life as he regresses into infancy.

In 2002, Mr. Gateau's clock was replaced with a properly working modern digital clock and in the spring of 2003, Benjamin dies in Daisy's arms. Back in 2005, having finally revealed the story of Caroline's father to her, Daisy dies. Hurricane Katrina floods a storage room holding Mr. Gateau's clock, which continues to tick backwards.

CAST

Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button (adult)

Robert Towers as Benjamin Button (apparent adult)

Peter Donald Badalamenti II as Benjamin Button (apparent adult)

Tom Everett as Benjamin Button (apparent adult)

Spencer Daniels as Benjamin Button (apparent age 12)

Chandler Canterbury as Benjamin Button (apparent age 8)

Charles Henry Wyson as Benjamin Button (apparent age 6)

Cate Blanchett as Daisy Fuller (adult)

Elle Fanning as Daisy Fuller (age 7)

Madisen Beaty as Daisy Fuller (age 10)

Taraji P. Henson as Queenie

Julia Ormond as Caroline Fuller (adult)

Katta Hules as Caroline Fuller (age 12)

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt as Caroline Fuller (age 2)

Jason Flemyng as Thomas Button

Elias Koteas as Monsieur Gateau

Tilda Swinton as Elizabeth Abbott

Mahershala Ali as Tizzy Weathers

Jared Harris as Captain Mike Clark

Faune A. Chambers as Dorothy Baker

Ed Metzger as Theodore Roosevelt

Phyllis Somerville as Grandma Fuller

Edith Ivey as Mrs. Maple

Josh Stewart as Pleasant Curtis

David Ross Paterson as Walter Abbott

Bianca Chiminello as Daisy's friend

Rampai Mohadi as Ngunda Oti

Lance E. Nichols as Preacher

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

loosely based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald