The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an Academy Award-winning 2008 American drama film, inspired by the 1921 short story of the same name written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film was directed by David Fincher, written by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, and stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The film was released in the United States on December 25, 2008.

The film received thirteen Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Pitt, and Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson. It won three Oscars for Art Direction, Makeup, and Visual Effects, and has tied the record for the most nominated film not to win the Academy Award for Best Picture with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

The elderly Daisy (Cate Blanchett) is on her deathbed with her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina approaches in August 2005. Daisy tells the story of a blind clockmaker named Gateau (Elias Koteas), who was commissioned to create a clock to hang in the New Orleans train station. After receiving news of his son's death in World War I, he continued work on his clock, but intentionally designed it to run backward, in the hope that it would bring back those who died in the war. After her cryptic story, Daisy asks Caroline to read aloud from a diary containing photographs and postcards written by Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt). Caroline begins to read as the story transitions to Benjamin's narration.

On November 11, 1918, just as the people of New Orleans are celebrating the end of World War I, a baby boy is born with the appearance and physical maladies of an elderly man. The mother of the baby dies shortly after giving birth, and the father, Thomas Button (Jason Flemyng), takes the baby and abandons him on the porch of a nursing home. Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) and Tizzy (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), a couple who work at the nursing home, find the baby. Queenie, who is unable to conceive, decides to take the baby in as her own, against Tizzy's wishes. She names the baby Benjamin.

Over the course of the story, Benjamin begins to biologically grow younger. In 1930, while still appearing to be in his seventies, he meets a young girl named Daisy (Elle Fanning), whose grandmother lives in the nursing home. The children play together and listen to Daisy's grandmother read from a storybook.

A few years later, Benjamin goes to work on a tugboat on the docks of New Orleans for Captain Mike (Jared Harris). In their free time, the captain takes him to brothels and bars. For the first time, Benjamin meets Thomas Button, who does not reveal that he is Benjamin's father. Later, Benjamin leaves New Orleans with the tugboat crew for a long-term work engagement; Daisy asks him to send her postcards from his travels, which Benjamin does.

During a stay in Russia, Benjamin meets a British woman named Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton) and falls in love with her; Daisy is visibly hurt to receive this news via postcard. Elizabeth is already married, but she has an affair with Benjamin. The fling ends the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, when Elizabeth abruptly departs.

Benjamin gets caught up in World War II when Captain Mike's boat and crew are enlisted by the United States Navy. After engaging a German U-boat in battle, Captain Mike and most of the sailors perish. After this, Benjamin, after seeing a hummingbird, sees death in a different way, as opposed to the retirement home where death seemed more natural.

Benjamin again meets Thomas Button, who is dying. Thomas reveals to Benjamin that he is his father and bequeaths all of his assets to Benjamin, including the house and the family button-making business. Benjamin eventually makes peace with his father before the elder Button dies.

In 1945, Benjamin returns to New Orleans, and learns that Daisy has become a successful dancer in New York City. When he travels there to meet Daisy at a performance, he finds Daisy has fallen in love with a fellow dancer, and tries to accept that their lives have separated.

Daisy's dance career is ended by a car accident in Paris. When Benjamin goes to see her, Daisy is amazed at his youthful appearance, but frustrated at her own injuries, she turns him away by telling Benjamin to stay out of her life.

In 1962, Daisy returns to New Orleans and meets Benjamin again. Now the same physical age, they fall in love and move in together. They experience the 1960s together, in large part blissfully but increasingly aware of Benjamin growing younger while Daisy grows older.

Daisy gives birth to a girl, Caroline. Benjamin, believing he cannot be a father to his daughter due to his reverse aging, and not wanting to burden Daisy with having to raise two children, sells his belongings, and leaves the proceeds to Daisy and Caroline. He leaves them both and travels the world.

Reading this account in the hospital room of 2005, Caroline learns that Benjamin is her father. She is upset that Daisy took such a long time to inform her of this, but finds that Benjamin sent her a postcard from everywhere for each of her birthdays expressing his love for his daughter.

In 1980, Benjamin, now looking like a young man, returns to meet Daisy in her dance studio. The aging Daisy is now married to Robert Williams, a kind man who supports her well, to Benjamin's relief. Daisy introduces Benjamin to Robert and the 12-year-old Caroline as a long-time family friend. Daisy and Benjamin then meet privately in Benjamin's hotel where they share their passion for each other, but they mutually realize that Daisy has become too old for Benjamin.

Benjamin departs again and continues to grow younger. One day Daisy receives a phone call from social workers. They inform her that they found Benjamin - now a young pre-teen just hitting puberty - living in a condemned building, and that they called her because they saw her name all over his diary. The social workers believe that he has dementia as he sometimes forgets that he had just eaten and cannot remember Daisy or much of his past. Daisy moves into the nursing home where Benjamin grew up and takes care of him as he becomes a confused 5-year-old boy with a growing temper.

In 2002, Mr. Gateau's old clock is removed from the train station. Shortly afterward, in the spring of 2003, the now-physically infant, 85-year-old Benjamin dies in Daisy's arms. At the moment before Benjamin dies, Daisy claims to have seen in his eyes that he still remembered her.

In the 2005 hospital room, the hurricane raging outside downs the electrical system. As Caroline briefly leaves the room, Daisy passes away, her wish of seeing Benjamin again seemingly answered by a hummingbird hovering outside the storm-drenched windows. Against the sounds of the city's emergency sirens and reports of breached levees, the backwards clock is shown in a basement, still working, as floodwaters envelope the storage room where it is kept.

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Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan.[2] It is an adaptation of the Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-nominated novel Q & A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup.

Set and filmed in India, Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of a young man from the slums of Mumbai who appears on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati, mentioned in the Hindi version) and exceeds people's expectations, arousing the suspicions of the game show host and of law enforcement officials.

After screenings at the Telluride Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, Slumdog Millionaire initially had a limited North American release on November 12, 2008 by Fox Searchlight Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures, to critical acclaim and awards success. It later had a nationwide release in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2009 and in the United States on January 23, 2009.[3] It premiered in Mumbai on January 22, 2009.

Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for ten 2008 Academy Awards and won eight, the most for any film that year, including Best Picture and Best Director. It also won five Critics' Choice Awards, four Golden Globes, and seven BAFTA Awards, including Best Film. Despite the film's success, it is the subject of controversy concerning its portrayals of Indians and Hinduism as well as the welfare of its child actors.
Set in 2006, the film opens with a police inspector (Irrfan Khan) in Mumbai, India, interrogating and torturing Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a former street child from the Dharavi slums. In the opening scene, a title card is presented: "Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it? A) He cheated, B) He's lucky, C) He's a genius, D) It is written." At the end of the film, the answer is given. Jamal is a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati) hosted by Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor). Jamal has made it to the final question, scheduled for the next day, but the police are now accusing him of cheating, because the other possibilities, that he has a vast knowledge, or that he is very lucky, both seem unlikely.

Jamal then explains that, while at least the question about Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan was very simple, he knew the answers of most questions by chance, because of things that happened in his life. This is conveyed in a series of flashbacks documenting the particulars of his childhood. This includes scenes of him obtaining Bachchan's autograph, the death of his mother during Hindu-Muslim riots in the slums, and how he and his brother Salim (he refers to Salim and himself as Athos and Porthos, and Latika as the third Musketeer.)

The children are eventually discovered by Maman (Ankur Vikal) while they live in the trash heaps. Maman is a gangster (a fact they do not actually know at the time they meet him) who "collects" street children so that he can ultimately train them to beg for money. Salim is groomed to become a part of Maman’s operation and is asked to bring Jamal to Maman in order to be blinded (which would improve his income potential as a singing beggar). Salim rebels against Maman to protect his brother, and the three children try to escape, but only Salim and Jamal are successful as Salim purposely lets go of Latika's hand as she tries to board a train they are hopping while trying to escape. Latika is re-captured by Maman's organization and raised as a culturally talented prostitute whose virginity will fetch a high price.

The brothers eke out a living, traveling on top of trains, selling goods, pretending to be tour guides at the Taj Mahal, and picking pockets. Jamal eventually insists that they return to Mumbai since he wishes to locate Latika. When he finds her working as a dancer in a brothel, the brothers attempt to rescue her, but Maman intrudes, and in the resulting conflict Salim draws a gun and kills Maman. Salim then uses the fact that he killed Maman to obtain a job with Javed (Mahesh Manjrekar), a rival crime lord. Salim claims Latika as his own and when Jamal protests, Salim threatens to kill him and Latika intervenes, accepting her fate with Salim and breaking Jamal's heart.

Years later, Jamal has a position as a "chai-wallah" (a boy or young man who serves tea) at a call centre. When he is asked to cover for a co-worker for a couple of minutes, he searches the database for Salim and Latika. He gets in touch with Salim, who has become a high-ranking lieutenant in Javed’s organization and confronts a regretful Salim on tense terms. Salim invites Jamal to live with him and, after following Salim to Javed's house, he sees Latika living there. He talks his way in as the new dishwasher and tries to convince Latika to leave. She rebuffs his advances, but he promises to be at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station every day at five p.m. for her. She tries to discourage him, but on the first day that Jamal waits there, Latika attempts to rendezvous with him, but is recaptured by Salim and Javed's men. One of the men then slashes her cheek with a knife, scarring her as Salim drives off, leaving Jamal with the onlooking crowd.

Jamal again loses contact with Latika when Javed moves to another house. In another attempt to find Latika, Jamal tries out for the popular game show because he knows that she will be watching. He makes it to the final question, despite the hostile attitude of the host who feeds Jamal a wrong answer during a break. At the end of the show, Jamal has one question left to win two crore, or 20 million rupees (about $411,000 U.S.) and is taken into police custody, where he is tortured as the police attempt to learn how Jamal, a simple "slumdog," could know the answers to so many questions. After Jamal tells his whole story, explaining how his life experiences coincidentally enabled him to know the answer to each question, the police inspector calls Jamal's explanation "bizarrely plausible" and, knowing he's not in it for the money, allows him to return to the show for the final question. At Javed's safehouse, Latika watches the news coverage of Jamal's miraculous run on the show. Salim gives Latika his phone, and the keys to his car, and urges her to run away. When Jamal uses his Phone-A-Friend lifeline to call Salim, Latika answers his phone and they reconnect. She does not know the answer to the final question either, but believing that "it is written," Jamal guesses the correct answer (Aramis) to the question of the one Musketeer whose name they never learned, and wins the grand prize. Simultaneously, Salim is discovered to have helped Latika escape and allows himself to be killed in a bathtub full of money after shooting and killing Javed. Salim's last words are "God is great." Later that night, Jamal and Latika meet at the railway station and they share a kiss. It is then revealed that the correct answer to the opening question is: D) it is written. In a scene reminiscent of many Bollywood musicals, they then dance, along with dozens of bystanders and even the juvenile versions of themselves, in the train station during the end credits.

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