Day 9: January 11th, 2014: Forrest Gump (1994) - Robert Zemeckis

The film that perhaps defines Tom Hanks’ career, and sets a precedent for a new age of a film making, beyond the massive blockbusters of the 80s, is Forrest Gump. The story is a comedy designed to take the political events of the past 40 years of American history and to reconcile them with our current age. Traumas, scandals, wars, everything is just randomized events in the eyes of Forrest Gump.

The film used extensive special effects to place Forrest Gump in archive footage, which makes everything that happens seems so oddly real. As anyone with a basic knowledge of 20th century American history can tell you, that is obviously the real John F. Kennedy, but Tom Hanks seems to be shaking his hand for real. It’s abnormal, and that’s the perfect word to describe the epic tale of Forrest Gump.

The story is told in flashback as Forrest Gump narrates it to random strangers at a bus stop. It doesn’t take much time to notice that Forrest isn’t very smart, and using him as the narrator makes for a very interesting telling of events that we’ve all come to know through our history classes.

Forrest endured some hardship at school because of his low intelligence, but also he suffered from a spinal problem that forced him to wear leg braces as a child. These two combined made him an obvious target for bullies. But his highly intelligent mother, played by the amazing Sally Field, is always there to teach him to always believe in himself.

And after the braces come off, Forrest discovers he is actually an extraordinary runner, and he gets a college football scholarship. He then enlists in the army during the Vietnam War. As often happens throughout the story, random political events are shown with Forrest consistently in the background. Some events he affected, some he witnessed, but they are always narrated without any kind of weight that they would normally have for the American people. Things just happen to Forrest, and him not knowing why is a perfect representation of the randomness of life. For example, he doesn’t know why Kennedy was shot, or why it was a big deal that African Americans were trying to go to his college, or even why men with flashlights were searching through an apartment at the Watergate Hotel.

So if Forrest lives a life completely unaffected by the political and cultural evolution of America, then his childhood friend Jenny is a foil for that sort of a unaware indifference. Jenny grew up with an abusive father, and she dates guys throughout her life that resemble that kind of aggressive figure. She becomes involved in the counterculture movement during the Vietnam war, she experiments with drugs, she is featured in Playboy. She is the liberal opposite of a so-called conservative Forrest, but he is only a conservative in the sense that happens to do what the government says he should do. And Forrest loves Jenny the entire time, totally unaware of the kinds of mistakes she is making.

And the film uses Forrest as a representation of the Baby Boomer generation, a somewhat lost group of Americans living through a period of cultural revolutions and political uncertainties. But his blissful ignorance makes him oblivious to these hardships, and he is able to remain happy despite the turmoils our country faced. And as an American who did not live through these events, I find that attitude very enlightening. Forrest Gump is loyal to his country in a time when hardly anyone believed in the American political system, not because he is dim-witted, but because he believes in searching for a kind of redemption from the harsh realities of what God set up for him in life. He is a decorated war-hero, but the audience never learns what he thinks about the war (because of a well-timed technical malfunction at an anti-war rally). And that’s okay. Forrest is happy because he stays true to himself, not because he follows some kind of government-ordered way of life. 

I think the film is trying to say that anyone is capable of finding happiness, even with the greatest hardships life can throw at us. Forrest’s lieutenant, Dan Taylor, is also proof of that fact. And that to me makes Forrest Gump a great film. However corny that sounds.

The film won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Tom Hanks. The director, Robert Zemeckis, also did the Back to The Future trilogy as well as Cast Away. Forrest Gump is #15 in the IMDb Top 250 and #76 on the AFI Top 100.