[yasr_overall_rating]
The presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson, Vietnam, Watergate, and other history unfold through the perspective of an Alabama man with an IQ of 75.
I still remember going to see “Forrest Gump” at the Savoy Cinema in Dublin back in the summer of 1994. I went with two friends and while I remember enjoying the movie, it didn’t leave a lasting impression on me like it did with so many other people. Tom Hanks won his second Oscar, and deservedly so, for his performance as the slow-witted but soft-hearted man who loved emphatically. Watching it again for the first time in 24 years, was a different moviegoing experience. I sat down to watch it with my mother and by the end of it, we were both in tears. The film struck me in ways I had never experienced before. Back when I first saw it in 1994, I was 22 years old and wide-eyed and excited at the thought of moving to America. As I watched it recently, I realized he endured a vast ocean of life experiences, losing his mother (Sally Field) and eventually his one true love, Jenny (Robin Wright), and his childlike innocence on the battlefield of Vietnam, he encountered a lot, and so had I. Forrest was more relatable to me than ever before as I was able to share some of his pain and thus, the film was more engaging. With age comes wisdom.
The movie begins in 1956 with Forrest as a young boy living in Greenbow, Alabama, along with his mother, Mrs. Gump. On his first day in school, he is mocked by all the other kids as he has to wear braces on his legs to help with a curved spine but on the school bus, he meets a young girl named Jenny, and the two become inseparable. Over the years, their friendship wanes as Jenny wants to be a musician and get out and see the world and while Forrest loves her dearly, he is afraid to tell her as he doesn’t think she loves him the same way. She eventually leaves town and Forrest graduates from college and enlists in the army, whereby he is sent to Vietnam. There, he meets Bubba Blue (Mykelti Williamson) and their commanding officer, Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise). Forrest and Bubba become best friends, and after Bubba asks Forrest to join his shrimping business in Louisiana after the war is over, Forrest happily agrees. While Forrest and Bubba and their platoon are ambushed in an attack, a lot of the men are killed but Forrest manages to save many of them, including Lt. Dan, who has lost both his legs. Sadly, he discovers Bubba right before he dies. Having been shot in the buttocks in the process of saving the men, Forrest is later given the Medal of Honor for his bravery and is honorably discharged.
He decides to make his way to Bubba’s house where he proceeds to buy a shrimping boat because as Forrest himself says, “a promise is a promise!” Later, Lt. Dan joins up with him and the two men become rich hauling in huge amounts of shrimp. When Forrest receives word that his mother is sick, he leaves Lt. Dan in charge and heads home to Greenbow, where soon after seeing her, she passes away. Forrest receives a letter from Lt. Dan stating that he invested some of their money in a small startup called Apple and they both become rich beyond their wildest dreams but Forrest stays at his family home, missing Jenny, until she turns up one day, tired of traveling, doing drugs, and sleeping around. Forrest takes her in, looks after her and for the first time in a long time, he is happy again. But it is shortlived, as Jenny slips out the front door one morning, leaving Forrest alone again. To try and stop feeling depressed, he decides to start running, first to the end of the street, then to the other side of town, then clear across the state, and just keeps running until he hits the Pacific ocean. Then he runs back across the country until he hits the Atlantic. For several years he runs, only stopping to eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. Along the way, he inspires many others to join him until one day he has had enough and goes back home.
He receives a letter in the mail from Jenny, asking him to come to her apartment and when he arrives, he is taken aback to see that she has a little boy named Forrest, whom she named after his father. Shocked and surprised, she tells him that he doesn’t have to be involved if he doesn’t want to but he insists that he will. She then proceeds to tell him that she is sick with a virus that the doctors can’t properly diagnose, and asks him to marry her. After moving back home into Forrest’s home, Jenny eventually passes away, leaving Forrest with his son. And the circle of life begins all over again, with both Forrest Sr. and Jr. sitting on the road in front of their house, waiting for the school bus to come along. Robert Zemeckis, who had directed “Romancing the Stone,” the “Back to the Future” trilogy, and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” won an Oscar for directing “Forrest Gump” and rightfully so, like his mentor before him, Steven Spielberg, he had been labelled a “popcorn” filmmaker, unable to grow up and make anything even remotely mature. He proved his naysayers wrong and crafted a movie that was deeply affecting and made you genuinely care about the story’s protagonist and his many adventures. The film meticulously inserts him into various moments in history, like his first experience as a boy with Elvis Presley, a young truck driver at the time who rented one of the rooms at his mother’s house, and while trying to dance to one of his songs, because of the braces on his legs, his jerky hip movements inspire Elvis to eventually include wild gyrations while playing guitar. Forrest would then go on to meet Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon at the White House and while staying at the Watergate Hotel, at Nixon’s insistence, he accidentally exposes the Watergate scandal. These moments were awe-inspiring at the time but 24 years later, they are a little dated. Still, the movie, overall, is a wonderful case study in human behavior and proves that you don’t need a 180 IQ to be the smartest person in the room. After all, stupid is as stupid does!
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