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Forrest Gump – Robert Zemeckis (1994)

Movie Review

By Andreea SormPublished 11 months ago 4 min read
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I've never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter, I've never seen a movie quite like "Forrest Gump." Any attempt to describe him will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is, but let me try. It's a comedy, I guess. Or maybe a drama. Or a dream.

In the well-known Empire magazine's ranking, Forrest Gump is the 20th greatest film hero of all time and one of the most interesting characters there. When I say this, I strictly refer to the character itself, and not to the metaphorical atmosphere woven around it, which could easily be substituted by a careful and speculative look.

Gump is one of those intricately constructed characters meant to suggest an era that must encompass as many significant aspects as possible, but in essence, he remains an extraordinary child (the one from the book that the movie's screenplay was based on) innocent, pure, slow-witted, but clear and precise. Not stuttering. Not an idiot. Not a fool. "Stupid is as stupid does," his mother explains to him, so Forrest Gump avoids stupidity and searches for meaning in every gesture, and the meaning...doesn't always make sense. Risk is an accepted and continued part of the education instituted by his mother. That's why she named her son after the Confederate/secessionist general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the unofficial inventor of the Ku Klux Klan: so that Gump would remember that people often do things that make no sense.

When you do everything deeply, outside of stupidity, and devoid of sentimentality or other emotional complications, then things pay off immediately. Gump becomes central. He teaches a young boy a new dance step and that boy becomes the king of rock 'n' roll (Elvis Presley), offers inspiration on a silver platter for one of the most beautiful songs ever (Imagine - John Lennon), naturally and accidentally triggers the Watergate scandal. He receives the Medal of Honor in Vietnam, becomes a famous football player, a great ping-pong champion, the luckiest shrimp fisherman, and through ricochet: a millionaire co-founder of the Apple empire (...a "fruit company"....)

Director Robert Zemeckis (Death Becomes Her, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Flight, The Polar Express, Cast Away) is not the kind of person to bask in the laurels of someone else's work. His remarkable qualities lie in his ability, this time, to extract his protagonist from one context (that of the novel) and relocate him in another, without faithfully adhering to the coordinates, but letting the story run free, only blocked on a certain course. The strategy opens up a path for Tom Hanks, who embodies the character without hesitation, also receiving one of the most deserved Oscars for Best Actor, but with a vision from a different perspective.

The movie owes a lot to its special effects, which drive the story forward and give it coherence, flavor, and substance. Through the direct references of scenes mixed between documentary and fiction (John Lennon, Richard Nixon, John Kennedy, George Wallace, Lyndon Johnson), key moments of pop culture are brought to the screen, few but significant and with a powerful emotional charge. The soundtrack firmly punctuates each moment and has a wide variety of resources to choose from, as the period in which the events take place is full of them.

It is probably the most representative moment of the plot and speaks of duality, defeat, expectations, and hopes; presented in a superb arc. It is the intersection of parallel destinies in which one ascends while the other declines. With a difficult childhood (sexually abused by her father), Jenny looks for a path in the hippie experiment, then in the peace movement, protests, and humanitarianism, but she falls into drug addiction, becoming a stripper and prostitute who ends up contaminated with AIDS. She is a loser and a condemned person, but in the sequence, I am referring to, realizing all this, she tells Gump about her future plans with overflowing optimism, in a way whose enthusiasm puts reality in great difficulty, miraculously forcing her to take a few steps back.

The power of confidence can move mountains, although confidence inevitably loses every final.

The cinematography is at the limit of the minimal support of a sad and charming story, full of wisdom, with discreet interventions and directorial solutions that do not aim to overload the projection or disturb the audience's attention.

The film closes in a circular fashion, with an update of the frames, with a feather taken by the wind from the pages of a book, after it had been tenderly placed there at the beginning, also taken from the air. From a station where the mother and son are waiting for the school bus, to another where the narrator tells the passers-by the story of his life, and back to the first, where Forrest Gump and his son from his relationship with Jenny now stand. The stopovers of life and the dream of a way of living... The images are impressive, poignant, and empathetic...

No, Forrest Gump does not blindly go through life but rather goes through it by allocating the correct, infantile price each time. Only what it costs. Nothing more. And the narrative confirms the validity of the alternative...

The overall tone of the production, oscillating between comedy and drama as it nonchalantly flies over conventional landmarks and ideals in which freedom opens up endless opportunities for prosperity and success through hard work and extreme mobility (Hello! - James Truslow Adams)..leads to one logical conclusion: Forrest Gump is America itself during the '50s-'80s...But he is also a beautiful man with a delicate mechanism, honest, especially: different from the rest by a different kind of sensitivity. It is a pattern.

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About the Creator

Andreea Sorm

Revolutionary spirit. AI contributor. Badass Engineer. Struggling millennial. Post-modern feminist.

YouTube - Chiarra AI

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