The story begins in 1860 with the birth of the protagonist, Benjamin Button. Benjamin Button is born with the body of a seventy-year-old man, and when his father first visits him mere hours after his birth he is already able to speak. To avoid embarrassment, Benjamin's father forces him to shave his beard and dye his hair in order to look younger. As the story progresses it soon becomes apparent to the Button family that Benjamin is aging backwards. At the age of eighteen he attempts to enroll at Yale University, but the officials at Yale send him away believing that he is a fifty-year-old man.

Several years later while attending a party with his father (who looks to be the same age as Benjamin), Benjamin meets the young Hildegarde Moncrief. He dances with her, and they quickly fall in love and marry. Benjamin soon takes over his father's hardware business, and he proves to be highly adept at the job--while growing fabulously rich. As Benjamin grows younger his wife ceases to attract him, and he soon decides to fight in the Spanish-American War. He serves with great distinction and receives a medal for a wound he received at the Battle of San Juan Hill. When he returns home his relationship with his wife deteriorates further, and he becomes more detached from her. In 1910 Benjamin turns over control of his company to his son, Roscoe, and enrolls at Harvard. His first year at Harvard is a great success, and he dominates on the football field. However, by the time Benjamin reaches his senior year he is a frail sixteen-year-old too weak to play football and barely able to cope with the academic load.

After he graduates from Harvard, Benjamin goes to live with his son who treats him somewhat disdainfully, telling Benjamin to call him "uncle" when other people are around. One day Benjamin receives a commission in the mail to serve as a brigadier-general in the United States Army. When he goes to report he is only just able to persuade a clerk to give him a uniform, for he looks to be only sixteen years of age. He is soon forced to leave. Benjamin returns home, and as the years progress he goes from being a moody teenager to being a young boy. As his body grows younger, Button slowly begins to lose his memory of his earlier life. The toys and games that he spurned as a newborn begin to interest him. As he reaches the end of his life he becomes a baby, and his nanny takes him for walks and teaches him to say words. Finally, at the end of his life, Benjamin Button ceases to exist.

• Official Movie Web Site

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