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Forrest Gump is a comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was a huge commercial success, earning US$677 million worldwide during its theatrical run making it the top grossing film in North America released that year. The film garnered a total of thirteen Academy Award nominations, of which it won six, including Best Picture, Best Visual Effects, Best Director (Robert Zemeckis), and Best Actor (Tom Hanks).
The film tells the story of a man and his epic journey through life meeting historical figures, influencing popular culture and experiencing first-hand historic events of the late 20th century while being largely unaware of their significance, due to his borderline intellectual disability.
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Quotations
Dear God, make me a bird, so I can fly far. Far far away from here.
He never actually said so, but I think he made his peace with God.
He was a very loving man. He was always kissing and touching her and her sisters.
His name's Forrest...I named him after his daddy.
I got to see a lot of countryside. We would take these real long walks.
Life is like a box of chocolates... you never know what you're gonna get.
Encyclopedia
Forrest Gump is a comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was a huge commercial success, earning US$677 million worldwide during its theatrical run making it the top grossing film in North America released that year. The film garnered a total of thirteen Academy Award nominations, of which it won six, including Best Picture, Best Visual Effects, Best Director (Robert Zemeckis), and Best Actor (Tom Hanks).
The film tells the story of a man and his epic journey through life meeting historical figures, influencing popular culture and experiencing first-hand historic events of the late 20th century while being largely unaware of their significance, due to his borderline intellectual disability. The film differs substantially from the book on which it was based.
Plot
The film begins in media res with a white feather falling to the feet of Forrest Gump, who is sitting at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia. Forrest picks up the feather and puts it in the book Curious George, then tells the story of his life to a woman seated next to him. The listeners at the bus stop change regularly throughout his narration, each showing a different reaction to his narration ranging from disbelief and indifference to rapt veneration.
His mother runs a boarding house in Alabama. One guest, a musician, picks up his own style of dancing from watching Forrest's shaky movements caused by his leg braces. He is later revealed to be Elvis Presley. To get Forrest into a normal school, Forrest's mother bribes the school's Principal with sexual favors. On his first day of school, he meets a girl named Jenny Curran, a girl who is sexually abused by her father and who becomes his life's love. One day after school, Forrest is being threatened by a group of bullies. Jenny tells him to run, and so he does, losing his leg braces in the process. His fast running ability becomes his favored method of travel, and during his senior year in high school, threatened by the same group of bullies, he runs through a football field and gets himself into college on a football scholarship playing for Paul "Bear" Bryant at the University of Alabama. He excels at football so much that he becomes an All-American, and meets President John F. Kennedy.
After his college graduation, he enlists in the United States Army. In boot camp, Forrest makes friends with Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue (Mykelti Williamson), who convinces Forrest to go into the shrimping business with him when the war is over. Forrest excels in training, and after finishing boot camp, Bubba and Forrest are assigned to the same platoon in Vietnam. As soon as they arrive with their new platoon, they meet their new platoon leader, Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise). After some time in the field - during which Forrest writes regularly to Jenny -, Forrest's platoon is ambushed while on patrol. Though Forrest rescues many of the men, including Dan, whose legs were severely injured and are later amputated, Bubba is killed in action, dying in Forrest's arms. Forrest is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism during the ambush, is promoted to Sergeant, and meets President Lyndon B. Johnson at his award ceremony.
After meeting Abbie Hoffman at an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C., Forrest reunites with Jenny, who has been living a hippie counterculture life. He also encounters Dan, who has become a bitter alcoholic, having felt that it was his destiny to die on the battlefield, as had all his ancestors. Forrest celebrates New Year's Eve with Dan, who is initially hostile and uses Forrest as a means of obtaining alcohol. When Forrest tells of his and Bubba's plan to buy a shrimping boat, Dan mocks Forrest and sarcastically promises that he will become first mate of the ship. However, Dan later finds empathy with the fact that Forrest has been discriminated against in the past because of his perceived low I.Q., likening it to his own experience of disability.
While Forrest is in recovery for a bullet wound in his "but-tox", he discovers his uncanny ability for ping-pong, eventually gaining popularity and rising to celebrity status and later playing ping-pong in China. After meeting with President Richard M. Nixon, Forrest inadvertently triggers the Watergate scandal, is honorably discharged from the army and returns home to Alabama. He finds that his mother has endorsed a company that makes ping-pong paddles, earning himself $25,000, which, after getting a new hair cut, a new suit, fancy dinner for his mother, a bus ticket and three Dr Pepper soft drinks, he uses to buy a shrimping boat, fulfilling his promise to Bubba. Dan returns to fulfill his earlier promise and becomes first mate of the boat.
Forrest and Dan fail to pull in much shrimp at first, but during Hurricane Carmen, both men stay out in the middle of the ocean with the boat, which is the only shrimping boat in the area to survive. The lack of competition helps Dan and Forrest to catch huge amounts of shrimp. In the middle of the storm, Dan finally overcomes his personal demons and becomes one of Forrest's closest friends. As his business partner, Dan later invests the money in Apple Computer, and Forrest is financially secure for the rest of his life. Forrest names his company Bubba Gump (which has since inspired an actual shrimp restaurant), and gives half of the proceeds to Bubba's family.
One day, Forrest is told on the radio that his mother is ill. He returns home immediately and sits down beside her. She tells him that she is going to die (of terminal cancer) and consoles him by saying it was her destiny and that they all had one destiny. She subsequently expires.
One day, while Forrest is mowing the lawn, Jenny returns to visit him, and he proposes marriage to her. She declines, though feels obliged to prove her love to him by sleeping with him, then she leaves early the next morning. On a whim, Forrest elects to go for a run. Seemingly capriciously, he decides to keep running across the country several times for over three years, becoming famous in the process. During his run, Forrest unwittingly inspires two separate entrepreneurs to create Smiley Face/"Have a Nice Day" T-shirts and "Shit Happens" bumper stickers.
In the present, Forrest reveals that he is waiting at the bus stop because he had received a letter from Jenny, who, having seen him run on television, had asked him to visit her. Once he is reunited with Jenny, Forrest discovers that she has a young son, of whom Forrest is the father and who is exceptionally intelligent. Jenny tells Forrest she is suffering from an unknown illness. Together the three move back to Greenbow, Alabama. Jenny and Forrest finally marry, with a completely changed Dan arriving for the wedding (now able to walk with the use of prosthetic limbs made of titanium alloy. Jenny dies soon afterwards.
The film ends with father and son waiting for the school bus on little Forrest's first day of school. Opening the book his son is taking to school, the white feather from the beginning of the movie is seen to fall from within the pages. As the bus pulls away, the white feather is caught on a breeze and drifts skyward.
Differences from novel
Forrest Gump is based on the 1986 novel by Winston Groom. Both center around the character of Forrest Gump. However, the film primarily focuses on the first eleven chapters of the novel, before skipping ahead to the end of the novel with the founding of Bubba Gump Shrimp and the meeting with Forrest Jr. In addition to skipping some parts of the novel, the film adds several aspects to Forrest's life that do not occur in the novel, such as his needing leg braces as a child and his run across the country.
Forrest's core character and personality are also changed from the novel, among other things he is an autistic savant - while playing football at the university, he fails craft and gym, but receives a perfect score in an advanced physics class he was enrolled in by his coach to satisfy his college requirements.
Cast
Themes
Though superficially Gump might not seem to understand all that goes on around him, the viewer gets the sense that he knows enough; the rest being superfluous detail. Roger Ebert offers the example of Jenny telling Forrest, "You don't know what love is."
Over Jenny's grave, Forrest ponders whether life is a series of meaningless accidents, as his mother offers on her deathbed or whether it's governed by a predetermined fate, as his Vietnam commanding officer emphatically believes, concluding "maybe it's both, maybe both happening at the same time."
It has been noted that while Forrest follows a very conservative lifestyle, Jenny's life is full of countercultural embrace, complete with drug usage and antiwar rallies, and that their eventual marriage might be a kind of tongue-in-cheek reconciliation.
Other commentators believe that the film forecast the 1994 Republican Revolution and used the image of Forrest Gump to promote traditional, conservative values adhered by Gump's character.
Production
Ken Ralston and his team at Industrial Light & Magic were responsible for the film's visual effects. Using CGI-techniques, it was possible to depict Gump meeting now-deceased presidents and shaking their hands.
Archival footage was used and with the help of techniques like chroma key, warping, morphing and rotoscoping, Tom Hanks was integrated into it. This feat was honored with an Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
The CGI removal of actor Gary Sinise's legs, after his character had them amputated, was achieved by wrapping his legs with a blue fabric, which later facilitated the work of the "roto-paint"-team to paint out his legs from every single frame. At one point, while hoisting himself into his wheelchair, his "missing" legs are used for support.
Dick Cavett played himself in the 1970s with make-up applied to make it appear that he was much younger than the commentator was during the filming. Consequently, Cavett is the only well-known figure in the film to actually play himself for the feature, rather than via archive footage.
John Travolta was the original choice to play the title role, and admits passing on the role was a mistake.
Reception
In Tom Hanks's words, "The film is non-political and thus non-judgmental". Nevertheless, in 1994, CNN's Crossfire debated whether the film promoted conservative values or was an indictment of the counterculture movement of the 1960s.
The film received mostly positive critical reviews at the time of its release, with Roger Ebert saying, "The screenplay by Eric Roth has the complexity of modern fiction...[Hanks's] performance is a breathtaking balancing act between comedy and sadness, in a story rich in big laughs and quiet truths....what a magical movie." The film received notable pans from several major reviewers, however, including The New Yorker and Entertainment Weekly, which said that the movie "reduces the tumult of the last few decades to a virtual-reality theme park: a baby-boomer version of Disney's America." As of January 2, 2009, the film currently garners an overall 72% "Fresh" approval rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes (based on 50 reviews collected), although its "Cream of the Crop" and community reviews bear much higher approval ratings of 82% "Fresh" (based on 11 reviews collected) and 94% "Fresh" (based on 1410 reviews collected total).
However, the film is commonly seen as a polarizing one for audiences, with Entertainment Weekly writing in 2004, "Nearly a decade after it earned gazillions and swept the Oscars, Robert Zemeckis' ode to 20th-century America still represents one of cinema's most clearly drawn lines in the sand. One half of folks see it as an artificial piece of pop melodrama, while everyone else raves that it's sweet as a box of chocolates." The film also came in at #76 on AFI's Top-100 American movies of all time list in 2007.
While the film illustrates "the powerful role that social memory plays in constructing concepts of nation" by placing "in relief the power of memory and narratives of memory to create subjective connections to the past," it also "creates a kind of prosthetic memory of the period [the 1960s] so that it can be integrated into the traditional narrative of nation" and "thus imagines America as a kind of virtual nation whose historical debts have been forgiven and whose disabilities have all been corrected."
Awards and honors
1994 Academy Awards (Oscars)
- Won - Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role — Tom Hanks
- Won - Best Director — Robert Zemeckis
- Won - Best Film Editing — Arthur Schmidt
- Won - Best Picture — Wendy Finerman, Steve Starkey, Steve Tisch
- Won - Best Visual Effects — Ken Ralston, George Murphy, Stephen Rosenbaum, Allen Hall
- Won - Best Adapted Screenplay — Eric Roth
- Nominated - Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role — Gary Sinise (as Lieutenant Dan Taylor)
- Nominated - Best Achievement in Art Direction — Rick Carter, Nancy Haigh
- Nominated - Best Achievement in Cinematography — Don Burgess
- Nominated - Best Makeup — Daniel C. Striepeke, Hallie D'Amore
- Nominated - Best Original Score — Alan Silvestri
- Nominated - Best Sound Mixing — Randy Thom, Tom Johnson, Dennis S. Sands, William B. Kaplan
- Nominated - Best Sound Editing — Gloria S. Borders, Randy Thom
1995 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (Saturn Awards)
1995 Amanda Awards
- Won - Best Film (International)
1995 American Cinema Editors (Eddies)
- Won - Best Edited Feature Film — Arthur Schmidt
1995 American Comedy Awards
- Won - Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture (Leading Role) — Tom Hanks
1995 American Society of Cinematographers
- Nominated - Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases — Don Burgess
1995 BAFTA Film Awards
- Won - Outstanding Achievement in Special Visual Effects — Ken Ralston, George Murphy, Stephen Rosenbaum, Doug Chiang, Allen Hall
- Nominated - Best Actor in a Leading Role — Tom Hanks
- Nominated - Best Actress in a Supporting Role — Sally Field
- Nominated - Best Film — Wendy Finerman, Steve Tisch, Steve Starkey, Robert Zemeckis
- Nominated - Best Cinematography — Don Burgess
- Nominated - David Lean Award for Direction — Robert Zemeckis
- Nominated - Best Editing — Aurthur Schmidt
- Nominated - Best Adapted Screenplay — Eric Roth
1995 Casting Society of America (Artios)
- Nominated - Best Casting for Feature Film, Drama — Ellen Lewis
1995 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards
- Won - Best Actor — Tom Hanks
1995 Directors Guild of America
- Won - Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures — Robert Zemeckis, Charles Newirth, Bruce Moriarity, Cherylanne Martin, Dana J. Kuznetzkoff
1995 Golden Globe Awards
1995 Heartland Film Festival
- Won - Studio Crystal Heart Award — Winston Groom
1995 MTV Movie Awards
- Nominated - Best Breakthrough Performance — Mykelti Williamson
- Nominated - Best Male Performance — Tom Hanks
- Nominated - Best Movie
1995 Motion Picture Sound Editors (Golden Reel Award)
1994 National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
- Nominated - Best Actor — Tom Hanks
- Nominated - Best Supporting Actor — Gary Sinise
- Nominated - Best Picture
1995 PGA Golden Laurel Awards
- Won - Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award — Wendy Finerman, Steve Tisch, Steve Starkey, Charles Newirth
1995 People's Choice Awards
- Won - Favorite All-Around Motion Picture
- Won - Favorite Dramatic Motion Picture
1995 Screen Actors Guild Awards
- Won - Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role — Tom Hanks
- Nominated - Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role — Gary Sinise
- Nominated - Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role — Sally Field & Robin Wright Penn
1995 Writers Guild of America Awards
- Won - Best Screenplay Adapted from Another Medium — Eric Roth
1995 Young Artist Awards
- Won - Best Performance in a Feature Film - Young Actor 10 or Younger — Haley Joel Osment
- Won - Best Performance in a Feature Film - Young Actress 10 or Younger — Hanna R. Hall
- Nominated - Best Performance in a Feature Film - Young Actor Co-Starring — Michael Conner Humphreys
American Film Institute recognition
Soundtrack
The soundtrack from Forrest Gump had a variety of music from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and early 80s performed by artists. It went on to sell 12 million copies, and is one of the top selling albums in the United States. The score for the film was composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri.
Sequel
A screenplay based on the original novel's sequel, Gump and Co., was written by Eric Roth in 2001. Roth's script began with Forrest sitting on a bench waiting for his son to return from school. After the September 11 attacks, Roth, Zemeckis and Hanks decided the story was no longer "relevant". In March 2007, however, it was reported that Paramount producers took another look at the screenplay.
In the very first page of the sequel novel, Forrest Gump tells readers "Don't never let nobody make a movie of your life's story," though "Whether they get it right or wrong, it don't matter." The first chapter of the book suggests that the real life events surrounding the film have been incorporated into Forrest's storyline, and that Forrest got a lot of media attention as a result of the film.
See also
External links
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