Forrest Gump (1994)
Decided to start watching all of the Oscar best picture winners, in order. I hadn’t heard of some of these movies, some I love and have seen multiple times already and I actively hate others, planning to never watch them again. Fair warning, there will be spoilers in these and other reviews to help explain my point of view.
I remember sitting in the theater with the young man I was dating at the time, watching this movie that I knew nothing about unfold before me. I am an unabashed Tom Hanks fan, having loved everything I’d seen him in up to that point. As the film went on, I laughed, I cried, and I fell under the spell of this film. Is it flawed? Yes! Do I wish it had a different ending? Absolutely! Do I love this film with all of me? Yes, most definitely. I know a lot of people, at least a lot of vocal people on the internet, disagree with me. They think this is an overwrought, sentimental piece of garbage, not only a terrible choice for Best Picture, but a terrible movie, period. Since when did sentimental become an insult? Why can’t a movie aspire to do nothing more than take the viewer through a character’s life, highlighting the ways in which they overcome the difficult things they have to face? Are we really so bitter and cynical that a story such as this undeserving?
We meet Tom Hanks’ Forrest as he sits on a bench waiting for a bus to take him to a destination unknown to us. He tells his life story to the various people who find themselves sitting next to him throughout the day. We see from the beginning that Forrest has a mother who loves him very much and that she will not let her son have or be considered as less than, despite him being in leg braces and “not very smart”. His Momma, the wonderfully cast Sally Field, insists Forrest be allowed to go to school with everyone else; if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have met the carrot to his peas, Jenny, on the school bus when no one else wants to sit next to the boy in leg braces.
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Here, I have to say I think the movie didn’t do right by Jenny. We know she is abused at home and that abuse lingers and resurfaces in multiple ways throughout the rest of her life, but in the end, it seems as if all she does is suffer. The one thing I would have changed about this film is this. I am not saying she had to survive, but she should have had more happiness than the very little bit of it she seemed to only have when she was with Forrest.
Jenny (Robin Wright) truly is Forrest’s constant; from the moment he meets here, he is hooked and even though he finds happiness and success without her, she holds his heart. Their love story, both platonic and romantic, is the soul of the movie. It is sappy and perhaps a bit overdone, but I still enjoy it.
Forrest’s best friends, Bubba and Lt. Dan, are fantastic counterpoints to him. Bubba (Mykelti Williamson) is perhaps not that different from Forrest, except that he is Black, but we do see how having a friend who isn’t Jenny helps Forrest’s world grow. Gary Sinise as Lt. Dan is a revelation in this film. There was absolutely no reason for him to work as hard as he did here; often with no words at all he expresses every emotion, sometimes in a single scene. The fact that he survives and remains friends with Forrest seemingly forever, is one of the best parts of the film. The absolute best part is little Forrest. I cannot express how excited and happy I was to see that Jenny and Forrest had a child together. Seeing little Haley Joel Osment embody not only Hanks’ Forrest but also show us the great actor he was going to become, was a delight and helped me deal with the sadness of losing Jenny. The most brutal scene of the entire movie is Forrest standing at Jenny’s tree, giving her the letter little Forrest wrote for her. Even after numerous viewings, this scene makes me cry every single time.
Ending the movie as it began, with Forrest’s feather floating through the air is a hopeful and endearing way to let us know that Forrest, both the adult and the child, will be alright, which isn’t a terrible feeling to have when a movie ends, now is it?
Did this deserve to win? That’s a tough one for me to answer. Forrest Gump was a technical marvel for its time. I understand that the very techniques that blew our minds in 1994 now seem quaint and a bit silly to some these days, but they deserve recognition for how great they were. The acting is also outstanding, and Robert Zemeckis did a great job directing. There is an argument to be made through for either The Shawshank Redemption, Quiz Show or Pulp Fiction to have won over Gump. All of those are fantastic films, and Pulp Fiction is one of my all-time favorites. I doubt that would have ever won though, but if it had I wouldn’t be mad about it. I am somewhat surprised that Quiz Show didn’t win because it is the exact type of movie the Academy loves, being a movie about a real-life event with top-notch acting, writing and directing. Shawshank didn’t get the credit it deserved at the time; apparently a number of Academy voters would have selected this as the winner fi they could go back and change their votes. I am sure that isn’t unusual though; our tastes change over time so I bet a lot of votes for a lot of movies would be changed if they could. My vote hasn’t changed; I loved this movie the first time I saw it, and I love it still, flaws and all. 4.5 out of 5 stars.
