- A ten-year-old scientist secretly leaves his family's ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother, escapes home, and travels across the country aboard a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute.
- T.S. Spivet lives on a ranch in Montana with his mother who is obsessed with the morphology of beetles, his father (a cowboy born a hundred years too late) and his 14 year-old sister who dreams of becoming Miss America. T.S. is a 10 year-old prodigy with a passion for cartography and scientific inventions. One day, he receives an unexpected call from the Smithsonian museum telling him that he is the winner of the very prestigious Baird prize for his discovery of the perpetual motion machine and that he is invited to a reception in his honor where he is expected to give a speech. Without telling anyone, he sets out on a freight train across the U.S.A. to reach Washington DC. There is also Layton, twin brother of T.S., who died in an accident involving a firearm in the family's barn, which no one ever speaks of. T.S. was with him, measuring the scale of the gunshots for an experiment, and he doesn't understand what happened.—Anonymous
- T.S. Spivet (Kyle Catlett) is a young boy living on a secluded, rural Montana ranch with his moody older sister (Niamh Wilson), his pretentious entomologist mother (Helena Bonham Carter), and his emotionally distant and quiet wannabe cowboy father (Callum Keith Rennie). Lonely and often ignored and belittled by the people around him - even his own schoolteacher, who envies the boy's talent - T.S. spends most of his time playing, making amateur inventions, and meandering around the ranch with the family dog, Tapioca.
T.S. reveals that he had an older brother, Layton (Jakob Davies), who was much more into cowboy stuff, like his father, but not as scientifically-inclined as T.S. was. A tragedy unfolds as T.S. describes how he and his brother were out playing in an old barn on the property, using their father's gun to measure the distance of bullets, when Layton accidentally squeezed the trigger of the gun, shooting himself in the head and being killed instantly. While this event is never shown on-screen, T.S. reveals how much it scarred his family, and worse, that he blames himself for his brother's death.
T.S. receives notice from the Smithsonian Institute, all the way across the country in Washington, that he's won the Baird Award for inventing a perpetual motion machine. Of course, Ms. Jibsen (Judy Davis), the museum director, believes that T.S. is a grown man, and that the little boy on the telephone is the son of the prize-winner. Initially reluctant, T.S. decides that the best course of action is to run away from home to receive the prize. Before leaving, he packs a suitcase and takes one last look at Layton's old bedroom, a shrine of dusty toys and furniture that his parents are unable to bring themselves to throw away. T.S. passes his sister and his father upon leaving, who are both too wrapped up in their own daily routines to notice him.
That day, T.S. travels initially by train, hitching a ride in one of the rail cars, where he plays and imagines that Layton is still there with him, clear enough for a conversation. After nearly being caught by a guard at the train station, T.S. realizes that he needs to be careful, opting to sleep in an auction show camper that's being transported (there's a life-sized cardboard stencil of a family eating dinner that he can mimic so the average passerby thinks he's just part of the art). He only leaves the camper at night, in search of food, where he meets a hobo going by the moniker "Two Clouds" (Dominique Pinon). Two Clouds tells the boy a whimsical story of a sparrow and a pine tree, suggesting that everybody reaches the right destination for themselves eventually. T.S. contemplates using a nearby payphone to call his family, but he can't bring himself to do it.
The next day, T.S. walks along the railroad tracks with his backpack (having stored his suitcase in a nearby electrical grid box), when a fat, mean-spirited policeman (Harry Standjofski) begins chasing him and swearing at him. T.S. is forced to climb atop a separating bridge where a boat is passing through. Realizing that maybe he went too far, the policeman panics when T.S. nearly falls to his death, instructing him on how to climb back up to safety, but once T.S. is safe, he goes right back to chasing him again. T.S. eventually loses him, where he hitchhikes with a friendly trucker named Rick (Julian Richings), a man who enjoys meeting people and chronicling this in photography. T.S. realizes, after inquiring about a photo of Rick in military garb pointing a machine gun at an Arab man's head, that Rick was a solder post-9/11. Rick, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, tries to downplay the experience. Allowing T.S. to sleep on the truck, he notices that the boy is injured from nearly falling off the bridge earlier that day, and advises him to see a doctor.
After Rick drops him off in Washington, T.S. meets Ms. Jibsen at the Smithsonian. Skeptical that the boy could possibly be the one who invented the motion machine, T.S. proves her wrong by describing his scientific process. T.S. fibs and says he's an orphan, fearing that his parents will show up and be angry at him if they discover where he is. Ms. Jibsen, basking in T.S.'s spotlight, insists on being his new guardian and accompanying him to the conference where he'll be given the Baird Award. She often speaks over him though, much like most of the adults in his life do, which annoys him. He sits at a table alone during the conference, but is suddenly swarmed by a crowd of admirers when it's discovered that he's the boy who made the prizewinning invention.
T.S. gives a speech, where he eventually reveals that Layton shot himself in the barn, bringing his audience to tears. He admits, sobbing, that nobody ever even talks about Layton anymore, as if his brother never even existed. Unbeknownst to him, his mother watches from the rafters, having driven to Washington to find him. When T.S. appears on a sensationalist talk show later on, the host, Roy (Rick Mercer), is interrupted by T.S.'s mother, much to Ms. Jibsen's anger when she realizes that she can't be in charge of T.S. anymore. After a tense reunion, T.S. hugs his mother, but as they both leave, Roy and Ms. Jibsen chase after them. Ms. Jibsen, having gotten herself drunk, curses at T.S. and insults him. T.S.'s father appears and punches out Roy for harassing his son, while T.S. mother punches Ms. Jibsen. T.S. apologizes for hurting his father's feelings, but his father smiles at him and gives him a piggyback ride, letting the boy wear his favorite cowboy hat.
Back at home, it's revealed through T.S. in an epilogue that his mother just gave birth to a new baby. T.S. puts his skills to the test and invents an even better perpetual motion machine than the last one, and shows how it's used to rock his new infant sibling's cradle on the front porch.
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What was the official certification given to The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013) in Brazil?
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