He and she met in the river of time, and parted in the interlacing of time and space. In the long life, we meet too many people, who may be gradually forgotten in time, or at the end of the years to evoke our memories. But time always passes little by little, and only in artistic creation is time something that can be manipulated.
In the film, what foreshadows everything is the clock that goes backwards in time, which, like Benjamin's life, begins with the life of death and leaves in the interlaced time.
Human beings will never be able to beat the years, and even if time goes backwards, it will eventually come to an end. David Fincher uses Benjamin's life to turn back the flow and tell a memory that does not fade. Benjamin was born with a weak old man's body, but when he died, he was a child who should have been rejuvenated, and he experienced the opposite of a normal world in his life. Abandoned in a nursing home, Benjamin grew up among a group of people walking in their twilight years, listening to their stories and waiting for their deaths. For people who are supposed to be teenagers, witnessing death has long been commonplace. Not only is he a teenager, but throughout the film, Benjamin is saying goodbye to people and growing up in a constant death until he meets his own death and chooses to leave the normal life of the person he loves.
Remember the dwarf in the movie who let him see the outside world for the first time, the old man who told himself about being chopped seven times, the artist captain who made him an adult, the young woman who made him fall in love, the biological father who made him love and hate, and the most loved person throughout his life... These memories constitute Benjamin's special life, but these memories are slowly lost at the end of life, in the body of a child, becoming words full of temperature, accompanying the lover to the end of her life.
When Benjamin lay in the arms of his beloved in the state of a baby, forgot his life, slowly closed his eyes in warmth, leaving his lover with a special and legendary memory. The film ends here, and a crazy storm drowns the fallen clock and also takes Benjamin's life.
The backward trajectory of life allows Benjamin to have an upside-down life, old when the consciousness is chaotic, and return to youth after suffering vicissitudes, starting from the baby to the baby, where to start and where to go back, Benjamin finally found his home.
Benjamin missed her when she was at her most beautiful; Benjamin left her when she needed a family most. He can't have a normal life, just like he can't have a wild childhood and an old age full of memories. Is Benjamin's life a rejuvenation? I don't think so, he is just a rejuvenation in the sense of posture, Benjamin will yearn for the children playing outside the house when he is old, and he will also climb to the roof when he is a child and try to remember everything in the past. But this brings a unique perspective, allowing him to see the world and experience the whole life. 、
In the story at the beginning of the film, the building of the backward clock is to exchange for the sacrificial child, which is a good hope, but everyone knows that time can be reversed, but it cannot be reversed. In the miracle that happened to Benjamin, he also just went through his own life step by step, and memory is the most precious thing in life, because it means everything about you, sweet and sour, bitter and spicy, five tastes.