Summary

• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button explores Benjamin's unique life as he ages backwards, from birth as an old man to death as an infant-like appearance.
• The movie suggests a connection between Benjamin's aging and a clock that runs backwards, symbolizing a desire for youth to return.
• Benjamin's dementia and eventual death as a baby are attributed to his body aging backwards while his mind ages forward, representing the natural progression of life.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ending brings the love story to a fitting conclusion and even hints at why Benjamin Button ages backwards. The 2008 movie tells the story of Benjamin's life from the strange circumstances of his birth in 1918 to a little time after his death in 2003. The movie follows him as he is born with the wrinkled and delicate body of an old man, grows up in a retirement home, appearing as an old man, and gradually sees him getting younger until he eventually dies of old age while appearing like an infant.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is only loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, but the story is recounted through the love of his life, Daisy (Cate Blanchett). The framing device takes place after Benjamin has already died and finds an older Daisy asking her daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond) to read Benjamin's diary to her as Daisy lies dying. Benjamin's own recollection of his life explores the strange journey he went on through his life.

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Was Benjamin's Aging Linked To The Clock?

Several Details Connect The Two

Before the story of Benjamin's life begins in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the dying Daisy tells her daughter a story about a clockmaker called Monsieur Gateau (Elias Koteas), who was commissioned to build a clock for a new train station.

Gateau was left distraught when his son was killed in the First World War. When the clock was finally unveiled in 1918, the gathered crowd was stunned to see that it was running backward. Gateau explained that he designed it that way in the hope that time itself might start turning backward and that all the boys who were lost in the war might come home.

There is an obvious link between the story of M. Gateau and the story of Benjamin Button, who was born on the night that the war ended: November 11, 1918. Shortly before Benjamin reaches the end of his life, the backward-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.

David Fincher's movie exists in the genre of magical realism rather than full fantasy or science fiction, and therefore, Benjamin Button's condition and the clock are never explicitly said to be linked to one another. Rather, the clock and Mr. Gateau's wish are instead a metaphor for what Benjamin's life represents: a wish for the return of youth.

Why Benjamin Develops Dementia As He Becomes A Child

The Ending Showed That Benjamin Ages Normally In Some Aspects

Toward the end of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Daisy is reunited with Benjamin after a period of several years. No longer played by Brad Pitt, Benjamin now appears as a 12-year-old boy. He was living on the streets when Child Services picked him up and took him back to the old people's home, since the address was in his diary.

Moody and averse to being touched, Benjamin is developing dementia and struggles to recognize Daisy when he sees her again. Viewers may be confused as to why Benjamin is developing a disease that usually only afflicts old people when he is growing younger every day, but Benjamin Button explained it is the nature of his aging.

It's true that most of the afflictions that come with old age — from arthritis to cataracts — were present in Benjamin when he was born. However, only his body ages backward, whereas his mind ages forward. That's why when he was growing up he had a childlike curiosity and naïveté and was mentally the same age as Daisy.

Benjamin's dementia may be 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 his final years, his memories "faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been."

Why Benjamin Dies As A Baby

The Original Book Ends With A Similar Connection To The Beginning And End Of Life

Following Benjamin Button's life from its start to its logical endpoint, some viewers may have been expecting The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to conclude with some kind of horrifying reverse birth. Instead, Benjamin simply 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 one last time and then dies. Since he was born with the appearance and ailments of an 84-year-old man, his lifespan is defined by the condition of his birth. Fitzgerald's story ends similarly:

"He did not . He did not clearly whether the milk was warm or cool at his last feeding or how the days ed -there was only his crib and Nana's familiar presence. And then he ed nothing. 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 above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind."

Since Benjamin develops many of the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, the early symptoms of which, hinted at before the ending, can be surprisingly well understood, his death might be attributed to dementia, which in its end stages causes a person to lose the ability to coordinate basic functions like swallowing or breathing. A less grim and more poetic interpretation of Benjamin's death is that he had simply come to the end of his natural life.

The Real Meaning Of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button's Ending

The Movie Suggests The Beginning And End Of Life Don't Matter As Much As The Middle

The somewhat surprising message at the heart of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is that Benjamin's strange condition doesn't really matter. As screenwriter Eric Roth explained to Cinema 24/7, "It doesn’t make any difference whether you live your life backwards or forwards - it’s how you live your life." From the very start of his diary, Benjamin conveys that the circumstances of his birth and death — as bizarre as they might be — are the least significant parts of his life. Ultimately, after all, he goes out of the world the same way he came in: "alone and with nothing."

Though the often misunderstood Benjamin Button's backward aging 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 end when youth does. Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton), who abandoned her dream of swimming the English Channel after failing to do so as a young woman, succeeds when she's in her 60s. Daisy is distraught at the loss of her dancing career after her accident, but in her later life, she starts a dance studio and teaches other girls how to dance.

Benjamin's father, Thomas (Jason Flemyng), lives with the great regret of having abandoned his son but manages to reconnect with him and is able to tell Benjamin the truth before he dies. David Fincher said in an interview with Film Comment that he made The Curious Case of Benjamin Button "with the idea in mind that it showed the fallacy in the idea that youth is wasted on the young."

To his surprise, some of the people who saw the film came out of it with the opposite idea: that it proves youth is wasted on the young. Audiences bring their own ideas and experiences into the film, which in turn influences what they take away from it at the end.

Benjamin Button's Ending Works Even Though It's Confusing

Is It A Tragic Or Bittersweet Ending?

Even without thematic analysis, the final moments of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button still hold up — it doesn't work because it's high-concept, it works because it's incredibly emotional. However, there are no theatrics or over-the-top emotion, but that's precisely why it's so powerful.

It's a quiet, peaceful moment shared between Daisy and Baby Benjamin. When he es, she silently places the blanket over his face and continues to hold him, looking up as she reflects on the unique life of this remarkable man she had the privilege of knowing. It's one of the most dignified on-screen deaths in cinema. It's also still a baby dying, despite Benjamin having lived a full life. There are certain stimuli the human mind can't help but emotionally react to, and the death of an infant is one of them.

The sight of a baby ing away juxtaposes the silent relief on behalf of those suffering due to age or illness when they eventually find peace. This mix of feelings hit incredibly hard regardless of whether it was conceptually understood, ensuring the ending of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button lingers long after watching.

What David Fincher Thinks About The Benjamin Button Ending

Fincher Envisioned The Profound Final Moments Of Benjamin's Life

When it comes to David Fincher, he has a strong opinion of what The Curious Case of Benjamin Button explained with this ending. While people watched the baby die at the end and saw it as a tragedy, Fincher saw it very differently. The director explained (via The Guardian) that, in the end, audiences expect some sort of "special effect" in the movie, and for him, it was the age of time.

Fincher wanted to show Brad Pitt changing, but always remaining recognizable to viewers. The same thing is with Cate Blanchett, where he said her face always needed to be recognizable. That then led to the final scene. For him, it wasn't an "unhappy ending."

"I just thought the final image of a 74-year-old woman holding a seven-month-old baby and helping him through death, I just thought it was a beautiful way to end a love story."