David Fincher's The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

You’ve most likely heard sayings like "40 is the new 30," or even "the new 20," depending on whom you ask. When you realize that Madonna is fifty and still making music videos with entertainers like Justin Timberlake, it’s easy to believe in the old "age is just a number". But according to David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, age is much more than just a number. The protagonist Benjamin Button isn’t just born with the body of an old man he’s born with the mind and tastes of an old man. As he gets younger, it’s not just his body that’s more active, but also his social interests and passion for life. According to the author, age plays a big part in identity. You are going to
The film reminds us that physical changes are essentially accompanied by personality changes which tell us that older people tend to be less lively and more set in their ways, while younger people tend to be emotional and eager to learn. A symbol that closely associates with the concept of “time goes back” is the hummingbird, since it’s the only bird that can fly backward. It appears when Benjamin goes to the war and reappears using a medium shot of when Daisy dies in the hospital. Therefore, the hummingbird carries the message of death. However, the process of death contains double meanings in this story: one is that the one goes from young to old like Daisy; the other is from the old too young like Benjamin. The film indicates that the hummingbird is the symbol of “infinity” since it always draws the gesture of “8” which suggests that death does not bring the end to the story but opens a new start, just like Benjamin dies as a baby but his death signifies newness in life. Often an inner journey is triggered by a physical journey. This is highlighted by the utilization of a montage of Benjamin’s travel around the world. The scene quotes "For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. This quote demonstrates how the character could understand himself inside and out throughout the journey. He realizes the fact that life is not always fair but there’s always benefits to it. Benjamin tells his daughter that life presents us with tons and tons of opportunities and we are often told that these opportunities may never present themselves again, that the time to live is now before things get lost in the