The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008 Film) Summary

The film begins in present day 2005 New Orleans. An elderly woman, Daisy Fuller is in
a hospital as she is being made comfortable during her last hours of life as she is
terminally ill. She tells her daughter about a clockmaker who crafted a magnificent clock
right after World War I, which when unveiled ran backwards. He announced to everyone
that he made it this way so that the soldiers lost during the War, including his son, could
come home and live their lives which had been taken from them in battle. Daisy then
asks her daughter to read from a diary which belonged to a Benjamin Button.
We learn that a child was born in 1918, the same year the clockmaker created his clock
for the train station. The child, though only an infant, appeared as an elderly man and
was abandoned by his father on a doorstep after the mother passed away while giving
birth to him. The child is found by a woman named Queenie and a Mr. Weathers who
work at the nursing home where the infant was abandoned. Queenie chooses to raise
the child, and with the years passing, the young man, Benjamin grows. But, even at his
youthful age he appears as if he is as old as every person in the nursing home. He
struggles with hearing and his eyesight. When Benjamin is 12 he meets a young, 7 year
old girl named Daisy and they become very close.
Eventually, Benjamin leaves Queenie and what he has known as home and joins a
tugboat as part of the crew as the Captain believes him to be far older than he truthfully
is. Benjamin is constantly mistaken as being an older man as his body grows and he
seems to become more and more youthful. By the time the Japanese bomb Pearl
Harbor, Benjamin is still part of the Captain's crew and volunteers to join the Captain in
salvage work for the U.S. Navy. When out on orders the crew encounter a German
submarine which surfaces, and the Captain rams the underwater vessel with his tug
boat causing both ships to sink. Benjamin survives unlike most of the crew including the
Captain.

Benjamin then returns to his home in New Orleans and to his adopted mother, Queenie.
He also reunites with Daisy who tries to seduce Benjamin, but he doesn't reciprocate
her advance. After this rejection Daisy leaves. Finally, Benjamin learns the identity of his
father, Thomas who he meets as he is terminally ill. He learns his Dad has a button
factory which he leaves to Benjamin, including his estate.

Two years pass and Benjamin strikes out to New York City where Daisy lives as a
dancer in the ballet. But he learns that she has fallen for another man and he is
crushed, and can't carry on trying to go after her. It isn't until 7 years later in 1954 that
the two meet again after Daisy has been injured after being hit be a car in Paris which
ends her dancing career. She demands he not stay around as she is crushed by her leg
injury which has stolen her dream. Eventually, though, Daisy returns to New Orleans
and she and Benjamin begin a love affair which culminates in them being married and
having a daughter.

But, Benjamin fears that his reverse-aging will not allow him to be a good father to his
daughter and he decides to leave her and Daisy. He leaves them with a bank book so
that they will always be taken care of financially. Ten years later Benjamin arrives back
in Daisy's life, but she is remarried and their daughter is much older. Daisy hides
Benjamin's true identity from everyone and admits that he made the right choice to
leave. They have a final night of romance before Benjamin once again leaves.

Their paths would cross one final time in the 1990s as Daisy is called by a social worker
who has found a young Benjamin displaying early signs of dementia, though he looks
as young as 12 years old. Daisy's name was in his diary and that is how they contacted
her. Daisy cares for Benjamin until his death in 2003. He is 84 years old, but the size of
an infant baby. His death comes one year after the clock in the train station, which had
been running in reverse since 1918 was replaced. Daisy has told this story to her
daughter Caroline in order that she would finally know the true story of her father. Daisy
dies just as Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, and the film ends with the clockmaker's
clock being seen in a storage room as the flood waters begin to surge towards the clock
which hasn't stopped ticking backwards through time.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button reminds us that the best thing we can do is make
the most of our journey and be thankful for the people we meet along the way. It's all
gift. Benjamin always keeps an open mind and uses each encounter as an
opportunity to soften his heart. He makes the best of bad situations and does not
allow them to bring him down. He demonstrates an equanimity that enables him
to handle failure and success, defeat and victory, with calm. One of his favorite
mantras is "You never know what's coming for you." It is best to see everything
as a mystery that does not need to be solved or explained away. Just live in the
present moment and savor what presents itself to you.