The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Is a 2008 American romantic fantasy drama film directed by David Fincher. The storyline by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord is loosely based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film stars Brad Pitt as a man who ages in reverse and Cate Blanchett as the love interest throughout his life.
The film was released in North America on December 25, 2008 to positive reviews. The film went on to receive thirteen Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Fincher, Best Actor for Pitt and Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson, and won three, for Best Art Direction, Best Makeup, and Best Visual Effects.
Plot
In August 2005, elderly Daisy Fuller is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina approaches. She starts rambling to her daughter, Caroline, about a train station built in 1918 and Mr. Gateau, the best clockmaker in all of the South, who was hired to make a clock for it. Mr. Gateau was blind, and lost his son in World War I, which crushed him, but he continued to labor over his clock. When it was unveiled at the station, the public was surprised to see that the clock ran backwards, to which Mr. Gateau says he made it that way so that the boys they lost in the war could come back again and live their lives that were ended too soon. After that, Mr. Gateau was never seen again, and people speculated he died of a broken heart or went out to sea.
Daisy then asks Caroline to read aloud from the diary of Benjamin Button.
From the reading, it is revealed that on the evening of November 11, 1918, a boy was born with the appearance and physical maladies of an elderly man. The baby's mother died after giving birth, and the father, Thomas Button, abandons the infant on the porch of a nursing home. Queenie and Mr. "Tizzy" Weathers, workers at the nursing home, find the baby, and Queenie decides to care for him as her own.
Benjamin learns to walk in 1925, after which he uses crutches in place of a wheelchair. On Thanksgiving 1930, Benjamin meets seven-year-old Daisy, whose grandmother lives in the nursing home. He and Daisy become good friends. Later, he accepts work on a tugboat captained by Mike Clark. Benjamin also meets Thomas Button, who does not reveal that he is Benjamin's father. In Autumn 1936, Benjamin leaves New Orleans for a long-term work engagement with the tugboat crew; Daisy later is accepted into a dance company in New York City under choreographer George Balanchine.
In 1941, Benjamin is in Murmansk, where he begins having an affair with Elizabeth Abbott, wife of the British Trade Minister. That December, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, thrusting the United States into World War II. Mike volunteers the boat for the U.S. Navy; the crew is assigned to salvage duties. During a patrol, the tugboat finds a sunken U.S. transport and the bodies of many American troops. A German submarine surfaces; Mike steers the tugboat full speed towards it while a German gunner fires on the tugboat, killing most of the crew, including Mike. The tugboat rams the submarine, causing it to explode, sinking both vessels. Benjamin and another crewman are rescued by U.S. Navy ships the next day.
In May 1945, Benjamin returns to New Orleans and reunites with Queenie. A few weeks later, he reunites with Daisy; they go out for dinner. Upon failing to seduce him afterward, she departs. Benjamin later reunites with Thomas Button, who, terminally ill, reveals he is Benjamin's father and wills Benjamin his button company and his estate.
In 1947, Benjamin visits Daisy in New York unannounced but departs upon seeing that she has fallen in love with someone else. 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 youthful 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 and go sailing together. They return to learn that Queenie has died, then move in together. In 1967, Daisy, who has opened a ballet studio, tells Benjamin that she is pregnant; she gives birth to a girl, Caroline, in the spring of 1968. Believing he can not be a proper father to his daughter due to his reverse aging, Benjamin departs after selling his belongings, leaving a bank account book holding the proceeds behind for Daisy and Caroline; he travels alone during the 1970s.
Benjamin returns to Daisy in 1980. Now married, Daisy introduces him, as a family friend, to her husband and daughter. Daisy admits that he was right to leave; she could not have coped otherwise. She later visits Benjamin at his hotel, where they again share their passion for each other, then part once more.
In 1990, widowed Daisy is contacted by social workers who have found Benjamin—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. The bewildered social workers also say he is displaying early signs of dementia. Daisy moves into the nursing home in 1997 and cares for Benjamin for the rest of his life.
Daisy says that in 2002, a new clock replaced Mr. Gateau's in the train station, a digital clock that ran forward, not backwards. Then, a year later in the spring of 2003, Benjamin dies in Daisy's arms, physically an infant but chronologically 84 years of age. Having finally revealed the story of Caroline's father to her, Daisy dies as Hurricane Katrina approaches.
The final scene of the movie ends with Benjamin’s narration about what people were brought into this world for, recapping all the individuals that he loved and lost throughout his life. The film ends with alarms wailing as Katrina quickly floods a dimly lit storage room that holds Mr. Gateau’s forgotten clock, which continues to tick backwards.
Casting
In May 2005, actors Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett entered negotiations to star in the film. In September 2006, actors Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng and Taraji P. Henson entered negotiations to be cast into the film. The following October, with production yet to begin, actress Julia Ormond was cast as Daisy's daughter, to whom Blanchett's character tells the story of her love for Benjamin Button. Brad Pitt had collaborated with many of his co-stars in previous films. He co-starred with Ormond in Legends of the Fall, with Flemyng in Snatch, with Jared Harris in Ocean's Twelve, with Blanchett in Babel and with Swinton in Burn After Reading.
Filming
Some filming was conducted in the Garden District of New Orleans, including this home at 2707 Coliseum St.
For Benjamin Button, New Orleans, Louisiana and the surrounding area was chosen as the filming location for the story to take advantage of the state's production incentives, and shooting was slated to begin in October 2006. By filming in Louisiana and taking advantage of the state's film incentive, the production received $27 million, which was used to finance a significant portion of the film's $167 million budget. Filming of Benjamin Button began on November 6, 2006 in New Orleans. In January 2007, Blanchett joined the shoot. Fincher praised the ease of accessibility to rural and urban sets in New Orleans and said that the recovery from Hurricane Katrina did not serve as an atypical hindrance to production.
In March 2007, production moved to Los Angeles for two more months of filming. Principal photography was targeted to last a total of 150 days. Additional time was needed at visual effects house Digital Domain to make the visual effects for the metamorphosis of Brad Pitt's character to the infant stage. The director used a camera system called Contour, developed by Steve Perlman, to capture facial deformation data from live-action performances.
Several digital environments for the film were created by Matte World Digital, including multiple shots of the interior of the New Orleans train station, to show architectural alterations and deterioration throughout different eras. The train station was built as a 3D model and lighting and aging effects were added, using Next Limit's Maxwell rendering software—an architectural visualization tool. Overall production was finished in September 2007.
Music
The score to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was written by French composer Alexandre Desplat, who recorded his score with an 87-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Sony Scoring Stage.