Benjamin Button’s bell curve returns

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Shaft directs our conversation of ‘Benjamin Button’ back to the idea of the bell curve.

In my hope that it’s not a federal crime to beat a dead horse this much, I want to follow up on a couple of the comments below and connect them back to the ‘bell curve’ idea. As I mentioned earlier, from Benjamin’s perspective, his life takes on a bell curve in that in his early years he struggles to find his role (like the learning curve of a child), and in his later years he is somewhat helpless (like a fragile senior citizen). But it also appears that his life takes on this bell curve when you look at how he is treated by others -- in his early years, his father forces him into child-like behavior despite the incongruity between these activities and Benjamin’s physiological and mental makeup, and in his later years his son in many ways treats him like an aging father that his son doesn’t want to have to care for (e.g., the parent who gets forced into an assisted living facility), despite the fact that Benjamin looks and acts like a child.

-- Shaft