Forrest Gump won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1994. In fact, it won six Oscars that year, making it an Academy Award favorite, but I have disliked this movie since the first time I saw it in theaters. What has always struck me about this movie is its insistence that a person doesn't have to be influenced by or altered in any way by the forces surrounding him or her. Forrest manages to live through many of the great events of the second half of the 20th Century, and still he remains essentially the same person he was at the start of his film. It's an inherently conservative, almost reactionary, argument, and it's one that I just cannot accept. We are the products of our time period, and we do need to change and adjust periodically in the face of tumultuous world events.
The framing device of Forrest Gump has the title character (played by Tom Hanks) sitting on a bench talking to the various strangers who sit down with him to wait for a bus. He must be the most annoying person ever to grace such a bench. Who would truly want to sit and listen to two hours of non-stop ramblings about someone else's life? Pity all of the various folks who have to endure his life story, but then we need also to pity the filmgoing audience who has to endure it as well. It's as if we too are trapped on that bench, having to listen to this story and wishing the bus would just hurry up and get here so we can escape.
A lot happens in this film. Forrest manages to teach Elvis Presley how to dance. He plays football for the legendary Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama, and he even gets involved in the integration of the university. He joins the Army and serves in Vietnam (receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor) and then speaks at an anti-war rally in Washington. Tellingly, though, when he starts to speak, the sound system is sabotaged; we never get to hear what he says, so we never know how he truly feels about the war. He becomes a member of the team that represented "ping-pong diplomacy." He instigates the investigation into the Watergate break-in. He starts a jogging crazy and, along the way, introduces the phrase, "Shit happens," and the smiley face and its accompanying slogan, "Have a nice day." That he can be so blase in the telling of so many of these events is indicative of his single-mindedness. I felt most frustrated that he meets Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, as well as John Lennon and George Wallace, but when three of those men are assassinated, he describes their deaths as just another fact, certainly not one that would demand an emotional response.
As an aside, the special effects used to drop Forrest into these historical events are eye-catching. Some of the best parts of the film are seeing how seamlessly Hanks as Forrest is inserted into archival footage. I particularly liked his appearance on the Dick Cavett Show with fellow guest Lennon, who starts reciting lines from his song, "Imagine." Not that Forrest even realizes it; he's probably never even heard the song.
Through it all, Forrest only seems interested in marrying Jenny, his childhood sweetheart, nothing else. I suppose there's a lot to be said for the persistence of one man's love in this film, but he and Jenny are really not a good match. Jenny (Robin Wright), unlike Forrest, has gotten involved in all of the so-called counterculture movements. She's been a hippie, worked with the antiwar movement, hung out with the Black Panthers, even partied with the cocaine crowd. Naturally, in the world created by this movie, she has to be punished, and she is--by being infected with a mysterious virus for which there is no cure. The film never mentions AIDS, but it's pretty obvious from the context. After all, she has engaged in the kind of behavior that would have been considered high risk. As sad as Forrest is to learn of her diagnosis, the filmmakers seem to think that we should all accept that Jenny is responsible for her fate. She is Forrest's opposite in many ways, and only he can have his actions be validated.
Hanks is a good actor, but he's really given very little here to flesh out a character. What changes does Forrest really undergo? Even when he's rescuing his friends during battle in Vietnam, he's no different from the man he was back as a child in Greenbow, Alabama. He just happens to be in another country at the time, that's all. When he jogs for three years back and forth across America, there's no great revelatory moment even though he says he spent the time thinking about Jenny. At the end of his journey, he just says, "I'm tired. Think I'll go home now." That's it. Where can an actor like Hanks go with such a cypher as his character? The supporting cast is filled with good actors as well: Wright, Sally Field as Forrest's mother, a very young Haley Joel Osment as his son, Forrest Jr., and especially Gary Sinise as Lt. Dan. Sinise's character is actually more intriguing to me than Forrest. He, at least, gets to have some ups and downs. The only really emotional moment in the movie for me is when he appears at Forrest and Jenny's wedding. It's good to see him having come through the various trials of his life to arrive at a place of happiness.
I know you're thinking that one of my objections to this film would be its portrayal of Southerners. You'd be right, at least in part. It's just that Forrest is, in too many ways, meant to represent a certain type of Southerner, someone who has managed to remain steadfast in his belief system, unchanging, despite all of the rest of the world moving on and adapting. That he's also below the standard for intelligence to allow him into elementary school is another sign that the filmmakers (much like the novelist who wrote the book on which the movie is based) are anti-intellectual, and wouldn't that be the Hollywood stereotype of a Southerner? Too much thinking would obviously interfere with Forrest's ability to be surrounded by history yet unfazed by it. He's even named for one of his ancestors, Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan, a group whose sole function was to prevent change from occurring in the post-Civil War South. Why does Forrest Gump have to be a representative of the South? Where are the movies about intelligent Southerners, people who aren't stuck in the mindset of their ancestors? Where are the progressives and liberals of the South? It's very tiring for me to watch Hollywood movies about the South and its people.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the feather that appears at the beginning and ending of the film. It's one remarkable feather, with the ability to float for a seemingly endless period of time. In many ways, it's the older brother or cousin (whichever you prefer) to that stupid hummingbird in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, also written by Eric Roth. What is it with Roth and these floating objects? I suppose there's supposed to be something metaphorical about the feather, but I just find it distracting and annoying. It eats up time which would be better spent getting on with the story. The sooner Forrest Gump is over, the better.
Oscar Wins: Picture, Director, Actor (Hanks), Adapted Screenplay, Visual Effects, and Film Editing
Other Oscar Nominations: Supporting Actor (Sinise), Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound Effects Editing, Makeup, Original Score, and Sound
