For those of you who don't know, Benjamin Button was a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1922. David Fincher decided to direct a movie adaptation starring Brad Pitt in the title lead, and for his trouble, the film won 3 out of 13 Oscar nominations.
Essentially, this film is just Forrest Gump with an earlier setting and a main character with a case of backwards aging. Like Gump, Button has a love-of-his-life that pops up frequently throughout the film and, also like Gump, he has spent some time out on the sea.
I don't know why, but all this talk of backwards aging kind of reminds me of the German childrens' novel Die Unendliche Geschichte, known in the US as The Neverending Story, written by Michael Ende ("Ende" is the German word "end", HA HA HA) in 1979. The author wrote about a race of creatures called the "Sassafranians", "who are born old and die when they become babies". One can't say that Ende was stealing from Fitzgerald, because the idea of backwards aging is something that ANYONE could've came up with.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the film is really well made and it's freakin' good.
It's nice to see another film that's about the same length as Watchmen.
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