Ahsante sana mkuu
In August 2005, elderly Daisy Fuller is on her deathbed in a New
Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina approaches. She tells her
daughter, Caroline, about a train station built in 1918 and the blind
clockmaker, Mr. Gateau, who was hired to make a clock for it. When it
was unveiled at the station, the public was surprised to see the clock
running backwards. Mr. Gateau says he made it that way as a
memorial, so that the boys they lost in the war, including his own son,
could come home again and live full lives. Mr. Gateau was never seen
again.
Daisy then asks Caroline to read aloud from the diary of Benjamin
Button.
On the evening of November 11, 1918 , a boy is born with the
appearance and maladies of an elderly man. After the baby's mother
dies during childbirth, the father, Thomas Button, abandons the infant
on the porch of a nursing home. Queenie and Mr. "Tizzy" Weathers
find the baby, and Queenie decides to raise 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 an affair with
Elizabeth Abbott, wife of the British Trade Minister. That December,
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor , bringing 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 U-boat
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 afterwards, she departs. Benjamin
later reunites with the terminally-ill Thomas Button, who reveals he is
Benjamin's father and leaves 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 cannot be a proper father to his daughter
due to his reverse aging, Benjamin sells his assets, leaves the
proceeds behind for Daisy and Caroline, and leaves the next spring;
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 social workers 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, Mr. Gateau's clock was replaced with a
digital clock that ran forward. In Spring 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.
Benjamin narrates about what people were brought into this world for,
as a montage recaps the most significant people throughout his life.
The film ends with alarms wailing as Katrina floods a storage room
that holds Mr. Gateau’s clock, which continues to tick backwards
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk