Best Picture: # 67
Original Release Date: July 6, 1994
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 22 minutes
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Quick Impressions:
What can be said about Forrest Gump that hasn’t already been set to music by Weird Al? Probably plenty, but the lyrics of his parody of “Lump” kept playing on infinite loop inside my head as I watched this classic 90s Oscar winner with my daughter. (I particularly can’t seem to shake the line that begins, “His buddy Bubba was a shrimp-lovin’ man,” which is unfortunate.)
I’ll confess that the enduring popularity of Forrest Gump surprises me. I liked the movie well enough when it came out the summer after my freshman year of high school. I saw it twice in the theater, once with my family, and once with my best friend. The fact that we liked the movie baffled my mother whose dislike of it, in turn, baffled my friend. (That I watched Maverick the same way, once with my friend, then again the very next day with my grandparents, equally confused my mother who didn’t like that movie either. Meanwhile, her persistence in being so shocked confused me. I told her, “I like going to the movies. Why is that so hard to understand?” She insisted, “Jodie Foster is not convincing in that role.” I replied, “You’re never going to get any popcorn with an attitude like that.”)
Forest Gump was good enough and seemed different from most other films out at that time. In those days, I always decompressed by listening to my Walkman while running wildly through the house, and I often enjoyed the Forrest Gump soundtrack in this way (to the point that I associate those songs less with the movie than with various rooms of the houses where we lived when I was in high school).
When Tom Hanks won Best Actor (after just winning for Philadelphia the year before), I was outraged, not because I didn’t like the performance but because I couldn’t watch the Oscars. The spring semester of my sophomore year, we lived in Laredo, and at that time, it was impossible to get ABC there. You couldn’t even get it with cable. There was no way to get it. (I had never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life.) (It was a true hardship, I’m sure you’ll agree. I’m not sure how I survived, honestly.) I remember reading about the ceremony later in Entertainment Weekly and getting more and more enraged that I hadn’t been able to watch it (for reasons entirely beyond my control). For me, this was the most tragic aspect of Forrest Gump. (I was very good at feeling sorry for myself.) (I was also mad because someone in the U.K. said, “What will he do this time, slash his wrists?” referencing his tearful acceptance speech for Philadelphia. And I thought, “How are people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean somehow able to watch this Oscar broadcast when I am not? And what will he do this time? I guess I’ll never know!” (The idea that people who didn’t even like Hanks’s acceptance speeches were able to watch and comment on them in print before I could even catch up on what had happened somehow made me angriest of all. It felt like adding insult to injury. I was very melodramatic about the whole thing. For me, all of my own drama about Forrest Gump completely superseded the movie. It’s hard being sixteen, I guess.)
By the time junior year had started and people were still quoting Forrest Gump all the time, I’ll confess that I was getting a little sick of the film. (At least I lived in a suburb of Houston then and could watch ABC again.) Largely because of how often people my age quoted it in high school, Forrest Gump always struck me as a 90s fad that faded out. So I was really surprised a couple of years ago when I saw someone online refer to the film as something everyone had seen.
“Do kids today even know Forrest Gump?” I asked my husband. That seemed so unlikely. We asked our teenage son who shocked me by saying that of course, everyone’s seen Forrest Gump; his peers talk about it all the time; he’s seen it many times; he just watched it two days ago.
I immediately started to question everything I had ever known about reality. (I mean, I knew kids his age watch Friends, but that’s on Nick at Nite!) What is the tremendous draw of Forrest Gump?
My younger two kids had never heard of Forrest Gump. They knew Tom Hanks, of course. (My then four-year-old knew him from The David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special. I’ve seen multiple people online complain that special should never have been made and has no audience, but my weird kids love it. They’re inexplicably enormous fans of David Pumpkins. They all love the SNL sketch, and when he was little, my younger son used to beg to watch that cartoon Halloween special again and again. Before David Pumpkins, my daughter knew Hanks only from awards shows. While playing Taboo, she once described him as “someone you always see walking down a red carpet smiling at people.”) My older son has always watched more movies. (When he was little, we tried to have a new movie to show him every time we saw him, and he was very receptive.) But I was still shocked that he and all his friends were so into Forrest Gump. There’s nothing wrong with the movie, but if I had to latch onto one classic film that came out when I was in high school, Forrest Gump would not be my choice.
The Good:
The one thing I do like about this film is its strange meta commentary on our society. What would you get if you took someone with an IQ of 75 and allowed him to run around senselessly? Every trend in United States history and pop culture in the late 20th century! It’s very depressing, this idea that everything that has ever happened in our society makes no sense and has no point. We’re all running. We don’t know why.
To me, this movie masquerades as a feel-good story, but it’s actually an expose of how deeply (hopelessly) flawed our entire society is. Forrest Gump is like the Spirit of America. Imagine how different the movie would look if Forrest weren’t a real person. What if he were just imaginary? Who’s there to rescue and love the woman reeling from the after effects of a childhood full of abuse? Nobody. Who goes back time and again until he can find the fallen African American soldier? Nobody. Who helps a bitter, disillusioned, injured Vietnam Veteran become a functioning member of society again? Nobody. Who gives a happy childhood to the son of a single mother who died of AIDS? Nobody. Who gives an abandoned woman purpose in her life? Nobody. Who works for free mowing the field at the high school? Nobody. Who started all of these crazy trends and fads that our entire society got caught up in? Nobody we know.
This story may be fun to watch, but if you were to remove the character of Forrest Gump, it would instantly become much more realistic.
But I’m not convinced you’re supposed to watch it with such a gloomy outlook, so let’s say for a minute that the story is true. “Stupid is as stupid does,” is probably Forrest’s Mama’s most useful saying. Watching this movie again, I’m disturbed. There is no way Forrest Gump has an IQ of 75. I don’t believe it. IQ is pretty arbitrary, anyway. I remember in 7th grade being asked on an IQ test for the name of a certain object. I blurted out, “Thermometer,” then instantly corrected myself, “No, thermostat,” because the drawing on the card showed a thermostat, and I had misspoken in haste (trying to do them fast). The proctor smiled and told me, “You’d be surprised how many people do think that’s called a thermometer.” Immediately, I thought, “Okay, so the results of this test mean nothing.” I mean, what? Knowing the correct term for a thermostat has nothing to do with intelligence! (When I was younger, I took a Stanford-Binet test I respected more. For what it’s worth, both tests gave me the same score, which may undermine my arguments against the second one. But what if you lived in a house without a thermostat? What if your parents called it by the wrong word? What if your family didn’t speak English?)
Forrest has clearly been evaluated incorrectly. His mother teaches him to read, and we see that he writes Jenny ten thousand letters. I don’t think someone “stupid” would have such aptitude for a game like ping-pong, either. And he wouldn’t be able to put his rifle together so quickly and perfectly. I will guarantee you that I couldn’t do it. I’m not stupid. (I’ve taken tests. I know what a thermostat is and everything.) Forrest makes many smart decisions throughout the film and, in fact, doesn’t seem stupid at all. Speaking slowly and being socially awkward do not make him “stupid.” I mean, for Pete’s sake, he recalls everything that ever happened to him in his entire life and puts together a gripping, coherent, cohesive story. (He may not understand exactly what’s going on with Jenny. But he knows enough. The audience can figure it out only because Forrest has included enough relevant details and has repeatedly gone back to certain plot points.) I realize that the film’s visuals sometimes show us details that Forrest doesn’t narrate. And I get the concept of dramatic irony. We see things in Forrest’s story that perhaps he doesn’t. (But then are we sure we understand his story better than he does? How does he know to tell us those very specific things, guaranteeing our understanding? I think he constructs the story too well to be as “stupid” as that test said.)
So Forrest is not stupid. He demonstrates that with his own behavior. His mother is right, “Stupid is as stupid does.” It’s worth noting, too, that we never see Forrest taking this test. The principal of the school says that Forrest has an IQ too low for school. All that shows is that disabled children of single mothers are discriminated against. (For all we know, the principal sets out with the intention of coercing Forrest’s mother into bed. Maybe Forrest never even took an IQ test!) (I haven’t read the book.)
I do like the way Forrest Gump shows that our own words and actions reveal who we are. Labels applied to us by others do not define us. I also like how the film plays on this false notion that Forrest is stupid by showing how he doesn’t understand things like Vietnam. (The point is, who does understand Vietnam?) He doesn’t understand why Lieutenant Dan has to die (because Lieutenant Dan doesn’t have to die). He doesn’t understand why he can’t be a successful shrimp boat captain (because he can). And he loves Jenny. I also like his line, “I may not be a smart man, but I do know what love is.” He doesn’t love Jenny because he’s too “slow” to perceive her flaws. He loves her because they have a lifelong relationship built on mutual kindnesses and trust. Even someone with an IQ of 275 could surely see that human beings aren’t meant to be judged by some kind of elaborate pros/cons set up. It’s not that Forrest doesn’t understand the real Jenny. It’s that he does understand the real Jenny.
Over the years, when I’ve thought back on Forrest Gump, I’ve remembered it as a light, breezy comedy.
It’s not.
The moments of comedy are funny, though. And I like the performances (though at the time I would have preferred to see Morgan Freeman win Best Actor for The Shawshank Redemption. Of course, I would have preferred to see Tom Hanks win, too, instead of not being able to watch ABC). (Honestly, I think my mother’s oft-repeated take on this movie’s flaws has colored my impressions of it. When I look back, I can remember her reasons for not liking the film much better than why I originally liked it.) As a teenager, I found Jenny so frustrating, but as an adult, I sort of like Robin Wright in the role and appreciate her performance a bit more. And I’ve always liked Gary Sinise as Lieutenant Dan. Actually, I find Forrest’s cheerful determination to save him the funniest aspect of the movie, funny in sort of a dark way. I find it easy to relate to both Forrest (I feel like this is how I “help” too) and Lieutenant Dan. It’s also cool to see a very young Haley Joel Osment. And I’m always thrilled when Siobhan Fallon Hogan shows up in a movie. (She plays the bus driver in this one.) (There’s a street not far from our house named Egger Avenue, and my husband and I never pass it without making a bunch of Men in Black jokes.)
As I mentioned to my daughter about nine hundred times while watching the film, I do love the soundtrack. Alan Silvestri’s score is good, too. (For some reason, my daughter recognized it.)
Best Action Sequence:
This time around, I loved the interlude where Forrest runs…and runs…and runs…
A woman says to him, “Why are you doing this?”
And he pants back, confused to be asked, “I just felt like running.”
I told my daughter, “I relate to this. I hope nobody follows me. My leadership would be about like this.”
Best Scene:
The way Forrest describes his experiences in Vietnam is so charming. His narration makes this the funniest part of the film, for sure.
I also like all of the (successively more and more dramatic) returns of Lieutenant Dan.
Best Scene Visually:
As a teenager, I always loved the moment when the child Jenny runs away from her abusive father.
The Negatives:
I wish Sally Field were in the movie more. When I first saw it, I loved her so much as an actress (mainly because of my lingering junior high obsession with Sybil and all the good times my sister and I had together watching Steel Magnolias). Even my mom liked Sally Field, though she found it awful that she plays Forrest’s mother, given that Hanks and Field are so close in age, and she’d played his love interest before. (“But Sally Field can play someone of any age,” my mother decreed many times, “because she’s thin, and she just has a quality.” This was a big talking point of hers. It was also the only thing about Forrest Gump my mother and I agreed on, that we liked Sally Field.)
My mom just flat out didn’t like this movie. She thought it wasn’t realistic. I never knew how to answer that because…I mean, of course it’s not. (We also got in a big fight when she adamantly claimed that people never used profanity in the Army. “I don’t remember it that way,” she insisted. Keep in mind, my mother was never in the Army. There’s no point in rehashing this again. Clearly she was drawing on memories of old TV shows and cartoons from her childhood.) Forrest’s adventures are not particularly realistic, no, sheerly because of the staggering number of historical events he causes/participates in. My mom, though, could never leave it at that. She has been known to go further and suggest that “people weren’t really like that” in the 60s and 70s, denouncing as mythical lifestyles and events that were a part of my husband’s parents’ reality. There was just no point arguing with her about it.
I do think there’s a certain superficiality to the film that’s off-putting. I joked to my daughter that watching it might help cheer us up after Schindler’s List, but actually, Schindler’s List was the less depressing film, simply because it was more intellectually and morally engaging, more challenging, more substantial.
Forrest Gump does have moments that will make you cry and others that will make you laugh. But it’s not as much a comedy as I’d remembered. If you’re already depressed, this movie will not cheer you up.
I think it’s supposed to be inspirational, but from my point of view, it’s a pretty depressing movie. I liked it less this time than I did in high school. This time around, the moral seems to be, “No matter how hard life gets, as long as you’re actually Tom Hanks staring in a movie, everything will be okay.”
Overall:
I’m actually really curious to talk to more of today’s teens about Forrest Gump to find out why they hold the film in such high regard. It isn’t that I don’t like the movie. It’s that I worry I’m missing something fundamental that makes it a greater film than I realize. You’ll never hear a complaint from me about Tom Hanks winning Best Actor, though. That’s because when he wasn’t even nominated for his performance in Captain Phillips, it was the most egregious snub I’ve ever seen in my life. I complain about this all the time, and the knowledge that he had already won Best Actor twice does make me feel at least a little better.