The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

How this film uses it

Daisy, dying in a New Orleans hospital in August 2005, has her daughter Caroline read Benjamin's diary aloud. The whole story arrives as her memory, so you know from the start that it ends in loss. Even the warm years carry that.

Where to see it

The hospital bedside. Daisy listens as Caroline reads Benjamin's diary, and the story begins in 1918.

How this film uses it

A blind clockmaker builds a train station clock that runs backward, as a memorial to men killed in World War I. It is replaced by a digital clock in 2002, but the original keeps ticking backward in a flooded storage room after Hurricane Katrina. The clock echoes Benjamin's own life.

Where to see it

The backward clock. In 1918 the clockmaker Gateau builds a clock for the New Orleans station that runs in reverse.

How this film uses it

Digital Domain used a camera system called Contour to record facial movement from live performances. That data helped make the digital transformations of Brad Pitt's character, including the infant stage. His acting stays visible under the effects.

Where to see it

Benjamin's reverse aging. Benjamin moves from a wheelchair to crutches to walking as a child, and later he shrinks back into infancy.

How this film uses it

Benjamin looks different in each stage: frail at birth, then more upright and younger as the decades pass. Several actors play him at different ages. You can place each scene in his life by how he looks.

Where to see it

The 1962 reunion. Benjamin and Daisy meet again at a similar physical age, and their daughter Caroline is born in 1968.