Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers: Winston Groom, Eric Roth
Photography: Don Burgess
Music: Alan Silvestri
Editor: Arthur Schmidt
Cast: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Sally Field, Mykelti Williamson, Michael Conner Humphreys, Hanna Hall, Haley Joel Osment, numerous archival holograms
As of this writing, Forrest Gump ranks #11 on the IMDb Top 250 Movies list. As voted on by millions of IMDb users, it’s one of the most distinctly unusual lists for movie fans, a popularity contest like few others. Citizen Kane is humbled down at #94 and, in the #1 position (which it has held for a long time), stands The Shawshank Redemption. At this point, Forrest Gump is also one of the most successful money-makers in movie history, ranking #72 for lifetime grosses (according to Box Office Mojo). I would have been disappointed to learn all this about Forrest Gump in 1994 when I walked out of the theater after seeing it, but even the critics seem to be on board with the general assessment. The picture recently moved into the top 500 greatest movies of all time in the aggregated big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? Full disclosure, Forrest Gump is a movie I despise. I threw a 4 out of 10 at it in the IMDb poll years ago and didn’t see it a second time for 28 years. (Note: As a corrective to this intemperate display, see list below.)
Compare Shawshank, which I gave a 6 for being more generally good-hearted. You may say Forrest Gump is good-hearted—certainly Tom Hanks playing the title character is known for a good-hearted persona—but honestly the point of this movie escaped me, beyond the special effects, especially when you get into the details of the screenplay. Valorizing a “simple” Southern man whose IQ is 75 is commendable in a way, but what are we supposed to get out of it? He sits on a bench in Savannah, Georgia, with his box of chocolates, telling his precious, long-winded backstory to people waiting for buses. He’s boring. They ignore him as deranged but probably (hopefully) harmless. His stories are mostly matters of luck—good and bad, it’s all the same to Gump, he just carries on. Other continuing themes involve running—literally running—and a feckless love interest kinda sorta girlfriend, Jenny (Robin Wright), who is presented as a victim of hackneyed liberal ‘60s values. I didn’t know why this movie exists at all, let alone has achieved such lasting massive popularity.
As of this writing, Forrest Gump ranks #11 on the IMDb Top 250 Movies list. As voted on by millions of IMDb users, it’s one of the most distinctly unusual lists for movie fans, a popularity contest like few others. Citizen Kane is humbled down at #94 and, in the #1 position (which it has held for a long time), stands The Shawshank Redemption. At this point, Forrest Gump is also one of the most successful money-makers in movie history, ranking #72 for lifetime grosses (according to Box Office Mojo). I would have been disappointed to learn all this about Forrest Gump in 1994 when I walked out of the theater after seeing it, but even the critics seem to be on board with the general assessment. The picture recently moved into the top 500 greatest movies of all time in the aggregated big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? Full disclosure, Forrest Gump is a movie I despise. I threw a 4 out of 10 at it in the IMDb poll years ago and didn’t see it a second time for 28 years. (Note: As a corrective to this intemperate display, see list below.)
Compare Shawshank, which I gave a 6 for being more generally good-hearted. You may say Forrest Gump is good-hearted—certainly Tom Hanks playing the title character is known for a good-hearted persona—but honestly the point of this movie escaped me, beyond the special effects, especially when you get into the details of the screenplay. Valorizing a “simple” Southern man whose IQ is 75 is commendable in a way, but what are we supposed to get out of it? He sits on a bench in Savannah, Georgia, with his box of chocolates, telling his precious, long-winded backstory to people waiting for buses. He’s boring. They ignore him as deranged but probably (hopefully) harmless. His stories are mostly matters of luck—good and bad, it’s all the same to Gump, he just carries on. Other continuing themes involve running—literally running—and a feckless love interest kinda sorta girlfriend, Jenny (Robin Wright), who is presented as a victim of hackneyed liberal ‘60s values. I didn’t know why this movie exists at all, let alone has achieved such lasting massive popularity.
It's not just the special effects after all this time, because they actually look a little clunky now in our age of sophisticated photoshopping and deepfake video. At the time, yes, it was remarkable to see Gump hanging around with JFK, LBJ, George Wallace, Dick Cavett, John Lennon, etc., etc. It was a kind of special effects high-water mark for director Robert Zemeckis, who has never minded going a little bit gimmicky like his mentor Steven Spielberg. Gump is blended into classic familiar archival footage in amazingly seamless ways. But these scenes have lost a lot of their startling impact. And actually, now that I think about it, the special effects in Who Framed Roger Rabbit stand up much better.
But then, as the soundtrack inevitably went to work on me in my recent viewing—“Walk Right In,” “Hanky Panky,” “Fortunate Son,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “For What It’s Worth,” many, many more—the obvious finally occurred to me. Occam’s razor and all that, I’m a bit IQ-75 myself, but there it is. Forrest Gump is just a shameless nostalgia exercise for Boomers. From Elvis to Vietnam to the literal Watergate burglary to freaking ping-pong in the early ‘70s, our friend Gump always ends up in the middle of everything. He coins the term “shit happens” and inadvertently the smiley-face “have a nice day.” His love interest dies of AIDS after hitchhiking the country with hippies, living in communes, and sniffing cocaine in discos. It’s like a bizarro version of The Big Chill and Return of the Secaucus Seven, with the low-IQ big winner Gump as a kind of antihippie triumphing over history. He’s the tortoise that beat the hare in a world that needs hares.
Forrest Gump is a Southern man but Forrest Gump is at pains to show he is not a racist. One of his best friends is a Black man. Gump sees him die in Vietnam and his life is changed by it. But this friend, Bubba Blue (Mykelti Williamson), is as much a good-hearted imbecile as Gump. Together they are the Two Stooges, and Gary Sinise’s character is a bit of a Moe. I’m not comfortable with any of this and I don’t understand it either, just as I don’t understand or feel comfortable with Gump’s low-IQ status. What is this movie trying to tell us?
The place where it’s most apparent that Forrest Gump has nothing to say, where it all comes into sharp focus, is in the character of Jenny, Gump’s elusive love interest from childhood on. She’s an almost perfect cipher, a nothingness, a walking talking mess of Boomer cliches. Robin Wright plays it low-key, blending into the background of the movie like wallpaper, and manages an interesting and weird feat in being so memorably forgettable. She’s like the Robin Williams character in that Woody Allen movie who’s always out of focus (Deconstructing Harry). Even her physical features lapse into an undetailed haze in memory—even as the movie goes along, she never seems even remotely like an actual person. You can’t give all the credit for that to Wright. The screenplay and likely the source novel too notably have little of interest about her or involving her, using her merely as a place to heap cultural truisms, which is finally what Forrest Gump is: a big pile.
Top 10 Highest-Ranked Movies on the IMDb Top 250 Movies List (at the time of writing) That I Gave a 10 (so you’ll know I’m not a curmudgeon who hates everything that is popular):
1. #2, The Godfather
2. #10, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
3. #17, Goodfellas
4. #20, Seven Samurai
5. #21, It’s a Wonderful Life
6. #23, City of God
7. #42, Casablanca
8. #46, Modern Times
9. #50, Rear Window
10. #51, Alien
But then, as the soundtrack inevitably went to work on me in my recent viewing—“Walk Right In,” “Hanky Panky,” “Fortunate Son,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “For What It’s Worth,” many, many more—the obvious finally occurred to me. Occam’s razor and all that, I’m a bit IQ-75 myself, but there it is. Forrest Gump is just a shameless nostalgia exercise for Boomers. From Elvis to Vietnam to the literal Watergate burglary to freaking ping-pong in the early ‘70s, our friend Gump always ends up in the middle of everything. He coins the term “shit happens” and inadvertently the smiley-face “have a nice day.” His love interest dies of AIDS after hitchhiking the country with hippies, living in communes, and sniffing cocaine in discos. It’s like a bizarro version of The Big Chill and Return of the Secaucus Seven, with the low-IQ big winner Gump as a kind of antihippie triumphing over history. He’s the tortoise that beat the hare in a world that needs hares.
Forrest Gump is a Southern man but Forrest Gump is at pains to show he is not a racist. One of his best friends is a Black man. Gump sees him die in Vietnam and his life is changed by it. But this friend, Bubba Blue (Mykelti Williamson), is as much a good-hearted imbecile as Gump. Together they are the Two Stooges, and Gary Sinise’s character is a bit of a Moe. I’m not comfortable with any of this and I don’t understand it either, just as I don’t understand or feel comfortable with Gump’s low-IQ status. What is this movie trying to tell us?
The place where it’s most apparent that Forrest Gump has nothing to say, where it all comes into sharp focus, is in the character of Jenny, Gump’s elusive love interest from childhood on. She’s an almost perfect cipher, a nothingness, a walking talking mess of Boomer cliches. Robin Wright plays it low-key, blending into the background of the movie like wallpaper, and manages an interesting and weird feat in being so memorably forgettable. She’s like the Robin Williams character in that Woody Allen movie who’s always out of focus (Deconstructing Harry). Even her physical features lapse into an undetailed haze in memory—even as the movie goes along, she never seems even remotely like an actual person. You can’t give all the credit for that to Wright. The screenplay and likely the source novel too notably have little of interest about her or involving her, using her merely as a place to heap cultural truisms, which is finally what Forrest Gump is: a big pile.
Top 10 Highest-Ranked Movies on the IMDb Top 250 Movies List (at the time of writing) That I Gave a 10 (so you’ll know I’m not a curmudgeon who hates everything that is popular):
1. #2, The Godfather
2. #10, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
3. #17, Goodfellas
4. #20, Seven Samurai
5. #21, It’s a Wonderful Life
6. #23, City of God
7. #42, Casablanca
8. #46, Modern Times
9. #50, Rear Window
10. #51, Alien
As a high school history teacher I was always eye-rollingly annoyed by the popularity of FG. Sternly offended by the way it trivialized history. I huffed and puffed about it to anybody that'd listen. They usually deplored my lack of any sense of humor. Why can't history be fun? I'd throw up my hands in surrender. I should give it another try. I really don't hate fun. -Skip
ReplyDeleteNow you know how English, and Latin, teachers -- the good ones, anyways -- feel about 'Dead Poets Society'.
Delete;-)