WARNING: SPOILER (kind of)

CK and I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Always the critical analysts, we discovered something of an inconsistency in the movie's theory about Benjamin's condition.

Given: Benjamin was born young in spirit but old in physical development, continuing to mature emotionally and mentally and "devolve" physically from an old man to a youth as time passed.

Extrapolated postulate of movie: Benjamin would have to die a "traditional" baby-like baby in physical development but an old man in spirit.

Actual end-game of movie: Benjamin dies a traditional baby-like baby in physical development but, rather than continuing to age mentally and emotionally with his life experiences and memories in tow, he loses his memory, suffers from dementia, and devolves into a baby in spirit.

Why the movie crew decided not to have a baby-looking baby talk and act like an old man must only be attributed to the difficulties in getting a baby to posses the speech skills of an adult. Could they really have given us a Benjamin that looked like an infant but talked like an old man? Maybe. Maybe not. They did give us a Benjamin that looked like an "old baby" but acted like a youth. Anything's possible in that context.

On the other hand, perhaps the dementia makes sense. As we age in the first few years of life, our brains make connections to hold more and more memories and make more and more thoughts. If memories and thoughts once existed in connections that Benjamin had, and he started losing connections as he physically devolved into an infant, he would lose the connections, and, with them, memories and thoughts, only to be replaced with confusion.