The Best Picture Nominees – Could You Do Better?

posted by Gareth Higgins

We’ve reviewed all but one of the films nominated for Best Picture on the show already (odd one out is ‘The Reader’, which we may get to eventually); and as I turn them over in my mind, one thing is clear – they’re not the best films of the year, in my opinion at least.  (Actually, in fairness, I haven’t heard a single serious critic indicate anything other than the suggestion that this is the weakest slate of nominees in years.  So maybe it’s not just my prejudice speaking.)

I like something of each of them – and ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, the likely winner, is a wonderful film in many ways – but for the most part, they just make me think of another film that did the same job, only better. I’ll write about one of them over the next week or so; dear listener, please add your own alternatives below.  We’d be glad to hear your thoughts on other films that succeed where these nominees fall short.  (And if you want to make a case for the defense, please do – I’m open to seeing any one of the movies again to reconsider.)

‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ – the parallels with Gump are obvious and have been well-trodden.  It’s not that I mind film-makers taking another pass at themes they baked earlier; there is, of course, a noble artistic tradition of mining the same seam (you’ll enjoy (and understand), for instance, Van Morrison’s later albums more if you’re familiar with the embryonic stuff; John Irving returns again and again to the same places and people who remind us of characters in a John Irving novel because it’s what he knows – but he finds new things to say).  ‘Button’ and ‘Gump’ both bear the hand of Eric Roth, whose classy work I’ve enjoyed in the past.  I am, indeed, in the minority that finds ‘Forrest Gump’ to be both delightful and serious – with Forrest and Jenny representing the two halves of the US broken apart by the Sixties, and their son the embodiment of what can happen when the best of both worlds integrate.  Forrest Obama, anyone?

Benjamin Button, on the other hand, appeared to me to be a striving effort at Something Big and Important, that ultimately made much less of its potentially thrilling/chilling central hook than I’d expect from David Fincher – the characters who populate this film don’t remind us of anyone we actually know, and Benjamin is utterly reactive for the duration – he says nothing, does nothing, and in the only point of crisis where he actually makes a decision, it is an entirely irrational one that any sane person would have moved mountains to prevent.  It’s technically gorgeous – and, of course, so are Brad and Cate – but it seems to me that the most one can learn from it is that if you’re as good looking as either of them, life can still be difficult; whereas ‘Forrest Gump’ came close to suggesting how America could reconcile with itself.

(Image at top from Digital Domain Benjamin Button show reel)

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 1:17 pm. It is filed under Awards, Blockbusters, Blog, Gareth Higgins, The Oscars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.