Did Love Beat the Demon? - Forrest Gump vs. Natural Born Killers

Over the years there have been many films made about the American Dream. Some of them present the Dream as an optimistic pursuit of the self-made man as popularized by Horatio Alger, while other films have opted for a darker, more complex treatment of this particular vision. Two films came out in the summer of 1994 that share the same cynical view of the American Dream, but apply completely different approaches to their subject matter. Forrest Gump chronicles the adventures of a man with an I.Q. of 75 who stumbles his way through pivotal events in American history while becoming, through no fault of his own, a successful embodiment of the American Dream. In contrast, Natural Born Killers explores the media's fascination with serial killers and mass murderers, and how they are elevated to the status of folk heroes by media outlets interested only in ratings. An examination of both films in terms of technique, the intended audience, and the underlying message that they propagate illustrates the fact that Gump and Killers are not diametrically opposed visions of America, as the media and most critics have observed, but in fact serve as a critical analysis of the American Dream. Gump opts for a more controlled, classical approach, while Killers uses the tools of popular culture to not only mirror but critique society by using contemporary styles and methods. Despite the different approaches to their subject matter, these two films present similarly opposed visions of American culture; Gump shows a more pessimistic version of recent American history, while Killers offers an often nihilistic view of modern culture.

The cinematic techniques used in Forrest Gump and Natural Born Killers are crucial in understanding the intent of each film. Gump utilizes the Classical Hollywood style of filmmaking (1930-1950) so that the technique is invisible, while the story becomes of paramount importance. Director Robert Zemeckis uses the indiscernible editing and flashback technique reminiscent of this period of American cinema to create a film that harkens back to what many critics consider the golden age of film. Even the often-praised use of computer technology to seamlessly place Gump (Tom Hanks) with famous historical figures contributes to the masking of technique. This state-of-the-art technology performs its job so well that it seems like Gump is really interacting with prominent people from the past. Gump takes a more conservative approach by employing a classic style of filmmaking, but, in doing so, it subtly parodies the films of this period by aping their style. This approach is evident from the opening scenes of Gump’s childhood where Zemeckis uses the Classical Hollywood style to present a dichotomy of the “idyllic and [the] awful.” He juxtaposes postcard images of small-town American life, complete with white picket fences and vast fields of lush, green grass, with the dark flip side that involves Forrest’s mom (Sally Field) having sex with the school board superintendent so that her son may enroll in a regular class; Jenny fleeing from her abusive, drunken father; and young Forrest being attacked by vicious bullies who delight in bouncing rocks off the slow-thinking, handicapped child’s head. It seems, judging from the heaps of praise from critics and the massive box-office receipts of the film, that people have a selective memory, remembering only the good aspects of Gump while failing to understand the real intention of Zemeckis’ film.

While Forrest Gump stresses narrative over style, Natural Born Killers makes it blatantly obvious to the audience that they are watching a film. Director Oliver Stone applies a chaotic style of filmmaking that draws the viewer "into a vortex of the unreal," as one critic put it. By repeatedly mixing various film stocks, and by using front and rear-projection photography as well as animation, Stone is, in a sense, constructing the film "via television and as a homage to television ... like watching two weeks of television in two hours. There's the aggression of the imagery, the channel-surfing philosophy of moving on." Like Gump, Stone’s film also uses the initial opening scenes to introduce the style and technique of the film. Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory Knox’s (Juliette Lewis) stopover at a roadside diner is interrupted by a trio of rude rednecks who are systematically butchered (along with everyone else in the diner save one) by the couple in a frenetic, chaotic collage of film techniques. As Stone noted in an interview, this disorienting approach makes Killers “not an easy movie to settle into, you can’t get a point of view, you have to surrender to the movie. If you resist the movie with conventional ethics, you’ll have a problem.” Stone’s film adopts the style of the culture it parodies, and attacks tabloid media and MTV culture by using the hyperkinetic editing tempo of music videos and the constantly changing point-of-views within the film to mirror our channel-surfing, fast food culture.

One of the most interesting aspects of both Forrest Gump and Natural Born Killers is the audience that each film targets. Gump, with its classic-rock soundtrack and Classical Hollywood style of filmmaking, appeals to the Baby-Boomer generation looking for a comforting story in this age of violent action films. Ironically, Gump remains detached from much of the Baby-Boomer culture throughout the film, which tends to either show the negative side of its history or parody it. Zemeckis offsets important historical events with comical scenes that reduce these pivotal affairs to light, insignificant moments. This is true when Forrest inadvertently stumbles on a famous peace rally in Washington, D.C. where legendary sixties icon, Abbie Hoffman asks him to speak to thousands of anti-war protestors. Just as Forrest begins to speak, the sound to his microphone conveniently cuts out and his words are lost forever. It is a comical moment that trivializes this momentous event and only enhances what critic Dave Kehr recognizes as the film’s real intention: a “dark, social satire, fixed in an epic vision of American history as a series of con games and power plays.” Stone's film, on the other hand, attracts the opposite end of the spectrum: the twentysomething generation, which is skeptical about contemporary culture.

To this end, Natural Born Killers contains a soundtrack filled with fashionable, alternative music ranging from Lard to L7 and that has been arranged by Trent Reznor, the creative force behind the popular music group, Nine Inch Nails. By employing a music-video style in Killers, complete with its own rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack, Stone is tapping directly into the youth market by introducing a film that young people can relate to instantly. Television has created short attention spans in the youth of today, and, as a result, they are unwilling to sit still for the long, meandering pace of Forrest Gump, and instead embrace the channel-surfing aesthetic of Killers. The media, to a certain degree, play a role in this generation gap. Many reviews have misread both films – praising Gump for its uplifting message of hope and celebration of the American dream, while criticizing Killers for its cynical, fatalistic outlook. This outlook may speak more to jaded youth than an older generation who still believe that there is a glimmer of hope. It is this glimmer that upon first inspection seems to shine brightly in Gump, but after closer scrutiny is revealed to be a hollow facade.

The underlying message that each film communicates is also indicative of the audience that watches it. Forrest Gump presents the triumphs and tragedies of the Baby-Boomer generation and wraps it up in "an entertaining story that satisfies [their] nostalgic urges ... and reaffirms the uniqueness and importance of their generation." Gump bombards the viewer with cheery pearls of wisdom like, "life is like a box of chocolates," but this nostalgic mood ends when the film moves into the late 1970’s and early 1980’s – a time of the Boomers’ decline. However, this is only a surface reading of the film. By presenting a figure like Forrest Gump who “survives because he isn’t very smart,” and remains “magnificently blank,” Zemeckis’ film suggests that only “by surrendering your will and identity, by refusing to see the horror around you, can you make it in America.” Those characters in the film that try to alter their fate or protest are punished for their trouble: Jenny (Robin Wright) wants to become a famous singer while Bubba (Mykelti Williamson) aspires to be a successful businessman. Both are killed off as a result and Forrest’s best friend, Lieutenant Dan (Gary Sinise) has both his legs amputated. All three tried to make a difference and control their own fates, unlike Forrest who is content to run away from his predicaments. He survives because he refuses to stand up to his problems.

Conversely, Natural Born Killers challenges authority with its satirical attacks on tabloid media and its "trust no one" outlook on life in the United States. Unlike Forrest Gump, in which its protagonist maintains a safe, ironical distance from it all, Killers is "unafraid to implicate itself in the sadism of spectacle." Stone’s film is unafraid to present an amoral world where the protagonists are not instantly likable or endearing. It embraces and confronts the ugly side of the American dream head on. Moreover, the viewer is not safe from this view. By having us look at the action through the eyes of the murderous protagonists themselves, as is evident in the opening diner massacre, Killers implicates us as much as it does them in the spectacle of murder.

As one critic has observed, Natural Born Killers “is a film about film. It is Oliver Stone dueling with the recent history of the movie image. It is an attempt to look at how an ‘image culture’ has taken over from immediate experience.” Stone’s film is like one big collage of images, either sampled directly from or influenced by previous films. This includes a soundtrack that is not a coherent work by one composer, but rather fragments upon fragments of songs from a multitude of sources. Stone has taken to notion of film and distorted it so much that he has created something truly unique – a postmodern pastiche film that attacks the conventions of Hollywood.

Forrest Gump, in its own subtle way does much the same thing. Zemeckis' epic film is a potpourri of many existing genres, including the war film, the melodrama, and the comedy. However, Zemeckis plays with the conventions of each of these genres within his film so that our expectations and knowledge of them is challenged. Gump's tour in Vietnam invokes both The Flying Leathernecks (1951) and Platoon (1986). His tour is at once triumphant (he saves Lt. Dan) and tragic (Bubba dies). Zemeckis is twisting the genre's conventions by giving it a unique spin much as Stone's Natural Born Killers acts as an epitaph on the action film by exploding it to exaggerated and extreme proportions. This film goes one step further by showing how distorted the culture that the Baby-Boomers created has become. It has changed so radically, as reflected in the "deranged visual overload" of the mise-en-scene, that the Boomer generation barely recognizes it – hence their rejection of Stone's film and their embrace of Gump, which, on the surface, seems to conform with their nostalgic memories. However, Gump’s audience is perhaps missing the true intention of the film: to challenge the self-importance, which this generation assumes all too often. Killers achieves the same goal and also warns the younger generation not to repeat the same mistakes of the past.

The Spielberg Blogathon: Catch Me If You Can

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of The Spielberg Blogathon organized and run by Adam Zanzie and Ryan Kelly. It runs from December 18 - 28. I urge you to check out and support all of the hard work these guys have done putting it together.

I’ve never been a big fan of Steven Spielberg’s post-1980s film career as he juggled big budget box office blockbusters (Jurassic Park) with obvious bids for Academy Award validation (Amistad). It has been the more offbeat films, like Munich (2008) and Catch Me If You Can (2002) that I’ve preferred over the likes of Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). To me, Catch Me If You Can has a looser, more freewheeling feel to it reminiscent of Spielberg’s earlier films, like The Sugarland Express (1974) or Jaws (1975). The film is based on the life of Frank Abagnale Jr., a clever con man who managed to steal millions of dollars during the 1960s and 1970s by convincingly assuming the identity of a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia doctor and a Louisiana lawyer – all before his 19th birthday. He would become the youngest person ever placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Not only did Catch Me feature a more playful Spielberg, but demonstrated Leonardo DiCaprio’s genuine acting chops – something he hadn’t really done since What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993). The film began a terrific run for the young actor who went on to star in films directed by Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Christopher Nolan.


The ‘60s style animated opening credits, accompanied by John Williams’ jazzy, atmospheric score, establish a fantastic retro vibe right from the get-go. It has the look and feel of a vintage Saul Bass credits sequence while anticipating the like-minded opening credits for the also ‘60s-set television show Mad Men. Catch Me If You Can cleverly begins during a T.V. game show To Tell the Truth where the announcer gives us a thumbnail sketch of Frank’s exploits and has us (and the game show audience) guess who is the real Frank out of three men claiming to be him. Of course, it is Leonardo DiCaprio but the irony here is that he’s on a game show where contestants have to guess his identity while the FBI had to do it for real. We flashback to Christmas Eve, 1969 and a sick, disheveled Frank (DiCaprio) is rotting away in a French prison. How did he get here? Why does he look so awful? What is this guy’s story? The film takes us back to 1963 and the beginning of Frank’s story.

He comes from a good home and nice parents – Frank, Sr. (Christopher Walken) and Paula (Nathalie Baye) – that clearly love him and each other. We see the inspiration for Frank’s future endeavors in his father who, early on, impresses his son by using his charisma to convince a sales lady to open a suit store early by concocting a story about an impending funeral. He then has his son pose as his chauffeur in order to impress a bank. That, however, does not work and Frank’s father has to sell their car and their home and move into a smaller one because he owes money to the IRS. And then, one fateful day, Frank’s father opens a bank account for his son and gives him a book of checks thus giving him the means to create his own fortune and his own destiny.

On his first day at school, he’s mistaken for a substitute teacher and goes with it just so he can get revenge on a bully but then continues the charade for an entire week! This incident, and the discovery that his mother is having an affair resulting in his parents getting a divorce, leaves Frank lost and disillusioned as the safe, idyllic existence he once knew is now gone. It is this lack of identity and security that inspires him to pose as other people in successful professions like airplane pilots and doctors. It’s an obvious reaction to his father’s failure to restore his family’s former way of life.

What is so amazing is how easy it is for him to pull off these elaborate schemes. It’s a combination of check forging and charisma. By maintaining a confident attitude and the ability to charm people, Frank makes lots of money and seduces several lovely ladies in the process (including then young up-and-coming actresses Elizabeth Banks, Jennifer Garner and Amy Adams). Eventually, Frank’s methods catch the attention of no-nonsense FBI investigator Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), an expert at identifying bank fraud and check forgers. He makes it his mission in life to catch Frank after he humiliates him during their first encounter.

Leonardo DiCaprio has a lot of fun adopting Frank’s various personas, including dressing like Sean Connery era James Bond after watching Goldfinger (1964). There is a delicious irony in DiCaprio, arguably the most recognizable movie star on the planet at that time thanks to Titanic (1997), playing a world class liar who jet sets around the world bedding high-class prostitutes and buying expensive suits. However, underneath the suave bravado, DiCaprio hints at a lonely young man looking for a father figure that he unknowingly finds in Carl. During their years-long cat and mouse game they develop a relationship and a mutual respect for one another. The role is a tricky juggling act as DiCaprio has to assume several different identities while revealing the real Frank once in awhile and also hint at his possible motivations.

Tom Hanks tones down his amiable persona to play the prickly Carl Hanratty. He hasn’t played this abrasive a character since the misanthropic stand-up comic in Punchline (1988). He does a good job playing a dogged investigator with a pronounced Boston accent. Carl even displays the same kind of humorless professionalism as a protagonist straight out of a Michael Mann film, albeit with a slightly whimsical spin that is Spielberg’s trademark.

Taking a break from playing the Christopher Walken persona he’s asked to trot out in almost every film he’s done in the last 20 years, the veteran actor is absolutely heartbreaking as Frank’s blindly optimistic father. He shows a range in this film that he hadn’t displayed in years (or since for that matter) and this is particularly evident in a scene where father and son meet over dinner at a posh restaurant. Frank tries to give his father a brand new car in the hopes of impressing his estranged mother but he has to refuse it (the IRS are still investigating him). He tries to reassure his son that he hopes to get back together with his wife but his voice cracks with emotion and he looks to be on the verge of tears. Walken comes off as incredibly sympathetic at this moment and your heart really goes out to his character as we realize that he and his wife will never reconcile.

Frank Abagnale sold the movie rights to his story in 1980 and for years they languished in development hell in Hollywood. In 1997, screenwriter Jeff Nathanson was given a tape of Abagnale talking about his life by producer Devorah Moos-Hankin. It reminded him of his favorite films that “focus on people who are working on the wrong side of the law; yet you can’t help but root for them because they’re so incredibly charming.” He thought that Abagnale’s life would make a good film. He pitched the project to DreamWorks because they had hired him to do rewrites on several films in the past. With Abagnale’s story, Nathanson saw a character he hadn’t seen in “a long time; Hollywood really stopped making that kind of movie in the ‘70s.” Initially, all he had were some “cool scenes” and “great cons” but it wasn’t until he met the real Abagnale that the script started to take shape. After several interviews with the man, he opened up to Nathanson and talked about his family life and the relationship with his father. He realized that this was the key to the film: “A kid searching for his identity, searching for the love he can’t find in his own house.” This realization helped Nathanson to start structuring the film and also introduce the character of FBI agent Carl Hanratty as a secondary father figure. The screenwriter spent three years rewriting his script. It was during one of these many drafts that Carl was given more of an emphasis and became a central character along with Frank.

Leonardo DiCaprio read Nathanson’s script and was fascinated by this man’s extraordinary life. DreamWorks became involved in 1999 based on Nathanson’s work. In 2000, Gore Verbinski had signed on to direct with DiCaprio starring and with a supporting cast that included Ed Harris, Chloe Sevigny, and James Gandolfini as the FBI agent in pursuit of Frank. However, delays on Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002) stalled the production and Verbinski and most of the cast went on to other projects. In 2001, Lasse Hallstrom was going to direct Catch Me If You Can with filming to start in March 2002. However, he also left the project. By August 2001, Spielberg came on board. He had just come off the dark, paranoid futuristic science fiction film Minority Report (2002) and was looking for something lighter to do. He had always been a fan of films about scam artists and con men and was drawn to Abagnale’s amazing exploits. Tom Hanks read the script and asked Spielberg and DiCaprio if he could be in the film and they quickly agreed. He replaced Gandolfini who had to bow out due to a prior commitment with filming another season of The Sopranos.

It was DiCaprio who first suggested to Spielberg that Christopher Walken play Frank, Sr. To play Paula, the director wanted to cast a French actress. His friend and fellow filmmaker Brian De Palma was living in Paris at the time and Spielberg gave him a copy of the script. He asked for help and De Palma conducted screen tests with several actresses, one of whom was Nathalie Baye who had been in Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973).

To research their roles, DiCaprio and Hanks attended one of Abagnale’s lectures to a group of FBI agents. Ironically, Abagnale was now the head of an anti-fraud consulting firm. Initially, DiCaprio was skeptical about meeting Abagnale and talked to Spielberg who discouraged him from doing it. Against his director’s wishes, DiCaprio met privately with his real life counterpart and invited him to live in his Hollywood house for two days, which he did. The actor studied Abagnale’s every move and taped their conversations. His impressions of the man were that he was “an instinctual actor. He’s somebody that for whatever reason puts people at ease.” DiCaprio’s approach to portraying Abagnale was that “at a certain point you draw enough information from the person, and then you have to go off on your own and create that character and let the character have a life of its own.”

Catch Me If You Can was shot in a speedy 56 days utilizing more than 140 sets on locations in and around Los Angeles, New York City, Montreal, Quebec City. Among the many locations used, the production was able to film in the historic TWA Terminal at New York’s JFK airport, which opened in 1962, and was empty when they shot there. At times, cast and crew shot in three locations on a single day. Spielberg did not do very many takes and remarked, “moving so fast kept the momentum going for the entire cast and crew.” DiCaprio concurred: “It was like a theatre group. We were always creating new things and then moving to the next location.”

Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski strove to keep the film’s visual approach very simple: “Let’s create a world that’s slightly idealistic, and not too serious.” The film’s color scheme often mirrored Frank’s emotional arc. His initial, ordinary existence is reflected in a bland, slightly monochromatic look. As Frank’s life gets richer and more successful, the color palette gets more vibrant with striking oranges, yellows, reds and pinks. At the end of the film, when he becomes a part of bureaucracy, the colors go back to being monochromatic in nature.

Legendary composer John William adopted a progressive jazz score in keeping with popular tastes of the 1950s and 1960s. He was influenced by the film music of Henry Mancini who dominated the ‘60s with his “stylish, jazzy approach to films that we now associate with that period so nostalgically.”

Catch Me If You Can enjoyed a very positive response from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars and wrote, “This is not a major Spielberg film, although it is an effortlessly watchable one.” In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “Catch Me is the most charming of Mr. Spielberg's mature films, because is it so relaxed. Instead of trying to conjure fairy-tale magic, wring tears or insinuate a message, it is happy just to be its delicious, genially sophisticated self.” While the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman was less impressed with the film, he did praise DiCaprio’s performance: “DiCaprio is far more successfully cast here than in Gangs of New York: His performance is all about acting; it's a mild kick to see how he'll manage to talk his way out of nearly every scrape.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman enjoyed Hanks’ performance: “It's a relief, after Hanks' funereal torpor in Road to Perdition, to see him having this much fun playing a law enforcer this dweebishly obsessed (the actor sports one of the few note-perfect New England accents in movie history).” In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe described it as “a movie that steadfastly refuses to be spectacular. At first, that seems to be its drawback. In the end, that's its disarming sweetness.” Finally, Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Abagnale's story, combined with Nathanson's sensitivity to his family situation and Spielberg's interest in lost boys who manage to find their best selves, results in about the nicest movie you could ask for at the holidays: a gently funny, sweetly adventurous film that makes you feel genuinely good, that is to say, entirely unconned by false sentiment or sharp, overmanipulative Hollywood practices.”

Ultimately, all Frank wants is for things to be the way they were when he was younger: his parents still married and living in a nice home. He thinks that by accumulating wealth and projecting a successful image, he can save his father from financial ruin and impress his mother enough so that she’ll take back Frank, Sr. But life doesn’t always work out that way and no matter how many glamorous professions he impersonates or fake checks he writes, is going to make things right. It is this sober reality that makes Catch Me If You Can more than just an entertaining caper film. In some respects, this is a coming-of-age film as we see Frank go from an ambitious teenager to a disillusioned adult. This is also a coming-of-age film for DiCaprio that saw him move on from youthful characters in flights of fancy-type films like Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic, to working with prestige directors like Spielberg on more mature fare that dealt with weighty themes. It is a transition he has made successfully as evident with award-winning films like The Departed (2006) and critically-acclaimed blockbusters like Inception (2010).

Here's a neat little article about the film's stunning opening credits sequence.