A couple of days ago we went to see the movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  Its premise is, at once, unusual yet obvious: it traces the life of a man born old and who, as he ages, gets progressively younger.  I have never encountered this kind of narrative (but I am not a fiction guy…); so, it struck me as ingenious, but it also seemed like something that should have been done before, rendered in various cultural contexts.  Maybe there are other versions of the "gets younger as he ages" story.  Please let me know if you know of any.

In any event, I will say right up front that I liked it.  Not everyone did.   For me, the questions raised by the process of aging backward were fascinating.  What kind of relationships could he have with other people?  What would his life amount to, ultimately?  And in pondering these questions, I found myself, as I often do, falling back on Taoist answers.  I will sketch out some of the Taoist angels below the fold, so as not to spoil the plot for those who have not yet seen the movie.

One main idea that emerges from the film is that is doesn't really matter if your life runs forwards or backwards, the general pattern of existence is basically the same.  Benjamin does in fact have meaningful relationships in his life.  His mother dies at his birth and his father abandons him because of his monstrous appearance as an infant, simultaneously tiny and ancient.  So that removes the question of parent-child connections, for the most part.  Bye bye Confucius.  He is taken in by an African-American woman who is the caretaker of a nursing home.  She is a wonderful character, driven by her Christianity to accept everyone as equally due respect and care.  Thus, the strange child-man grows up among the aged.   The care of his foster mother is something that enriches him, and to which he returns throughout his life.  She accepts him for what he is, without question or hesitation.

There is something Taoist about that.  Her acceptance, her openness to whatever it is that Way puts before her.  Her ability to see the Integrity (Te) of each and every thing in Way, however unconventional or bizarre.  And her patience and tolerance to allow Benjamin to discover his own Integrity (Te).  Perhaps there is a Confucian element to this – the love of a parent for a child, and the child's desire to return to and serve the parent – but it is too unusual to fit the Confucian mold.  Indeed, The foster mother does not impose any preconceived notions of juvenile obligation on Benjamin.  She just lets him grow, and she lets him go when the time comes.  Indeed, Benjamin seems like a character out of Chuang Tzu.

Benjamin experiences love, he has sex (in various places with a variety of women), and he even sires a child.  But he knows that his reverse aging makes it impossible for him to be a father; so, he leaves the woman and child he loves.  This is definitely a rejection of Confucian social expectations.  Here is a man who is a biological father but who knows he cannot properly fulfill the social role of father (he will be a child as his child becomes an adult).  Therefore, he walks away from that paradox.  A Taoist would understand this.  His unique place in Way, his strange backwardness, makes some things possible and some things impossible.  Best not to force the impossibilities and just embrace what is possible.

Without going further into the plot, the overarching Taoist message here is: all lives are essentially the same, even those that run in reverse.  There will be loss, there will be joy, there will be those things you never forget.  And if we realize that, then, as Chuang Tzu says, "there can be no loss."   Because in allowing the ebb and flow of pain and joy to unfold as they will, we are simply living through Way, expressing our Te, not losing anything, really. 

The manner in which Brad Pitt plays the Benjamin Button role seems to capture this sort of Taoist idea.  The LA Times critic complains that the movie lacks passion.  Yes, exactly.  Because, at some point, Benjamin comes to realize that his life is running backwards, that this is wildly unusual, and that he has no control over it.  He has witnessed others experience loss, he experiences it himself, but he also sees the other side of things, the happy side.  Realizing his exceptionalism, there is nothing to do.  He just has to let it play out, and he does.  The reticent, at times deadpan, approach that Pitt takes speaks to a Taoist interpretation of the film. A kind of wu-wei detachment toward a life running in reverse.

So maybe I've gone too far once again, reading Taoism into something that doesn't mean to be Taoist at all. But that's all right, at least it makes us think….