Benjamin Button vs Forrest Gump

Cafe Society
1

Well, this is the most obvious Oscar Bait™ in a long time. **Fincher **is really laying it on thick. I did enjoy it, but in the back of my mind, I was constantly comparing it to Forrest Gump. Now, I don’t think **Pitt **will get an Oscar for this, but I don’t think **Hanks **did that great a job either.

So 15 years later, Forrest Gump feels more gimmicky than a piece of art. Yeah, cutting and pasting the way **Allen **did in Zelig, but with better techs was amusing, but that’s just about it. As with Button, I have a hard time with a romance which is essentially a stalker pursuing a fantasy relationship. Passionate unrequited love is only endearing in theory. It’s creepy in real life.

**Fitzgerald’s **short story has been changed beyond recognition. I think the only thing left intact was the idea of ageing backwards. I haven’t read the novel Forrest Gump, so I can’t comment on that, but right now, it feels as if the writers of the Button movie looked more to FG, than the original material.

Both southern boys walk with crutches/leg braces when they are kids, feeling left out. Both encounter the love of their lives when young. Both work on boats, but only Forrest goes to war. Both are snubbed by the childhood crush - rather cruelly - who eventually returns to form a sort of make do relationship. Both protagonists get to see their mothers die, and it’s clear that the mother figure is much more important than the father figure.

I could go on, but in the end, I was only waiting for the resolution of TCoBB. I do think it’s the better picture of the two, since it’s more about storytelling and less about gimmicks.

Pitt won’t win the Oscar. I think he’s a good, sometimes even great actor. And I realize that he picks these projects to show that he’s not just a pretty face. But I also think that he’s gotta do what Redford did. Directing and a film festival will earn him credit 'til he’s old enough to have real character in his face (cf Redford, Newman).

And in 15 years, will TCoBB stand the test of time? I don’t think so. It will be remembered because it won a bunch of awards (Director for Fincher, finally?), but, like Out of Africa, new generations won’t find it that interesting.

2

I don’t know if I could say either film was better than the other. I wasn’t a fan of Benjamin Button. It was an interesting premise. Pitt and Blanchett both gave nice performances. But we weren’t given much reason to care about their characters, and their story wasn’t compelling. The ending did touch a nerve, but I was bored for most of the middle.

One big difference between the two films is that *Benjamin Button *didn’t have much to say about any major event of the 20th century, nor was the title character really affected by anything except WWII. That was a little strange. He didn’t seem to have any particular talents or interests beyond Daisy, and I didn’t get why he abandoned his daughter to roam around the world, when it seemed like he could have stuck around a few more years.

While Gump was certainly gimmicky and cliched, I still found the characters a lot more entertaining.

3

It should be noted that Eric Roth wrote the screen adaptations for both, so many of the (distracting, IMHO) similarities should not come as that big a surprise.

Button may not go to war, but he still does see some combat. And don’t forget that both, late in life, go on long-term, soul-searching sabbaticals.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Button got close to the number of Oscar nominations that Gump scored (a whopping 13), but it would surprise me if it won as many, especially in the major categories (Gump won 6, including 4 majors).

4

He wanted his daughter to have no memory of him and to believe whoever daisy remarried was her real father

5

Can someone explain how a woman who appears to be in her forties in 2005 never had occasion to notice who was listed as her father on her birth certificate?