In some bizarre Dorian Gray inversion, this tale about a man born old who ages into adulthood, then youth and finally infancy, is a film that meditates on love, aging, death, each to its season. Very loosely based on the 24-page short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is told in flashback by the elderly Daisy (Cate Blanchett), as we learn the story of Benjamin (Brad Pitt), who was born a wizened old baby with arthritis and glaucoma and then spent the rest of his life growing younger, thanks to a blind clockmaker and a backward-running timepiece in a train station.

Directed by David Fincher (Zodiac, Fight Club) with Forrest Gump screenwriter Eric Roth, the film opens in 1918, at the close of World War I, when Benjamin is born to a New Orleans businessman and his wife, who dies in childbirth. His horrified father (Jason Flemyng), abandons Benjamin on the doorstep of an old-age home - with $18 attached to his diapers - where kindly Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) adopts him as her own.

Benjamin is raised by a nurse in a nursing home. As Queenie, his "mom," Taraji P. Henson is the heart and life of the film's first hour, passing wisdom on to the little old man she raises among other little old men and women. The colorful supporting characters spill their guts to Benjamin Button, as he begins his life a very old and tiny man, ages into late-middle age, ripens into ... well, Brad Pitt. His posture straightens, his hair gains color and with each passing year, he becomes more vigorous.

As the protagonist grows younger, he bounces from surrogate father to surrogate father, among them a tugboat captain (Jared Harris) who shows him the world, introduces him to the horrors of World War II (there's a thunderously exciting U-boat attack sequence) and the relief of a safe harbor.