FORREST GUMP

FORREST GUMP  (ROMANTIC-DRAMA/COMEDY, 1994)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Sally Field, Mykelti Williamson, Geoffrey Blake, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Michael Conner Humphreys, Hanna R. Hall
Rated PG-13 for drug content, some sensuality and war violence.

FORREST GUMP was based on a 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom, loosely based.  The novel is somewhat saltier, telling the story of Forrest Gump as a 6'6'', 242 lbs. Southern idiot savant (he got a perfect score in his college physics class) who speaks with lots of strong profanity and has super-crazy sex, lives with cannibals for four years, and has careers as an astronaut, a Hollywood stuntman (working with a naked Raquel Welch), a professional wrestler and a chess champion.  Like in the movie, he also plays college football, joins the Army during the Vietnam War and plays Ping-Pong for the United States in China, but it isn't until the last chapters of the book that he gets into the shrimping business.  Groom has stated that he had envisioned the character in his novel as being played by John Goodman, and if you had added to that Joel and Ethan Coen directing, that R-rated FORREST GUMP might be something I'd be very interested in seeing.
What became the classic film FORREST GUMP, however, is just about as widely appealing, simple and sentimental as they come, tonally opposite from the book.  In an Academy Award-winning screenplay by Eric Roth, the relatively minor love story (heck, more of a sexual fling really) from the book becomes the core of the movie, where, even through all the remarkable adventures and historical encounters that Forrest finds himself in, his childhood sweetheart, Jenny, is what is always at the front of his simple mind.
Named for General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founding member and first "Grand Dragon" of the Ku Klux Klan, Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks, in his second Academy Award-winning performance, in consecutive years no less) is a slow-witted Southerner from Alabama born in 1944, who grows up with his single mother (Sally Field) who speaks in simplistic one-line lessons like "Stupid is as stupid does," and "Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get".  In his childhood, Forrest, with his below-average intelligence and leg braces, is a social outcast who bonds with his neighbor Jenny (played as an adult by Robin Wright).  Forrest instantly falls in love with Jenny from the first moment he sets eyes on her, but is oblivious to the fact that her alcoholic father is sexually abusing her, and while they're friends through high school, they soon after go very different ways.  After discovering that he can run very fast, Forrest is accepted into the University of Alabama on a scholarship to play football,  and during that time witnesses the Governor George Wallace's Stand in the Schoolhouse Door to protest racial desegregation, not thinking much of it, but helping Vivian Malone Jones with her books.  After graduation, Forrest casually applies to the U.S. Army, where he thrives thanks to his simplicity in following orders and befriends Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue, a slow-witted black man with a passion for "shrimping", which the two decide to go into business in together after their tour of duty in Vietnam.  Before shipping out, Forrest pays a visit to Jenny, who he saw in a Playboy, and is now playing guitar in not but a thong in a girlie show, and is well on her way into the hippie counterculture.  In Vietnam, Forrest's platoon, led by Lt. Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise) is ambushed and Forrest saves four men, but Bubba is killed in action, and Forrest is shot in the butt.  Recovering in the Army hospital, next to "Lt. Dan", who is resentful of being rescued by Forrest and having both legs amputated, Forrest becomes a ping-pong talent and receives the Medal of Honor from LBJ, who he then thoughtlessly moons on television.  He reunites with Jenny at a massive anti-war rally at the National Mall, but after walking around all night, she dumps Forrest for her abusive and angry hippie boyfriend.  Forrest goes on to play ping-pong for the United States on a goodwill tour in China, before returning to Alabama to start the Bubba-Gump Shrimp company for which he teams up with Lt. Dan, and they soon find themselves so overwhelming successful that they hardly have to work anymore, and they become millionaires when Lt. Dan invests their money in Apple Computers.  Jenny, having hit rock-bottom, returns to Alabama and spends some time with Forrest, and they have sex, but she leaves the morning after because she's crazy.  Forrest, kind of at a loss, decides to go running, and he doesn't stop for three years, running from coast to coast and back, inspiring a national jogging craze and inadvertently inspiring the "Smiley" and "Shit Happens" bumper stickers.  After he gets bored of that, Forrest returns home yet again and gets a letter from Jenny.  He reunites with her again, discovers he has a son (played by Haley Joel Osment, the kid who starred in THE SIXTH SENSE five years later), marries Jenny, and in 1982, Jenny dies, probably from AIDS, leaving Forrest a happy single father.  The end.
It all goes over better in the actual movie, as I assume you, the reader, already knows, but there you have it.

Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, carrying Mykelti Williamson as Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue.

FORREST GUMP was the top movie at the domestic box-office in 1994 and the second highest-grossing film worldwide (behind THE LION KING) that year, making it one of the last three highest-grossing movies of their year to also win an Academy Award for Best Picture (THE LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING in 2003 and TITANIC in 1997 are the other two).  Despite its evident affection from the public, it's one of the more controversial picks for "Best Picture" in Oscar history, and it isn't strictly disdain from "snobby" critics either, who lauded the film with praise.  It won five other Academy Awards as well, for Best Director, Best Actor (Hanks), Best Visual Effects (it isn't always recognized as such, but FORREST GUMP is a notable special effects landmark), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing, and has been frequently honored by the American Film Institute on lists of best American movies and memorable movie quotes.  It was even selected for preservation by the American Film Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant", noting its "technological innovations" and "resonance within the culture".  But it's the sort of movie that people are cautiously divided over.
In the words of director Robert Zemeckis, "Gump is a completely decent character, always true to his word. He has no agenda and no opinion about anything except Jenny, his mother and God".  True, Gump has no agenda, but that hasn't convinced a lot of people that the movie doesn't.  Many political conservatives have claimed, and still claim the films values as their own, and more than a few liberals have been willing to let them have it.  The conservative periodical National Review included on their list of "25 Best Conservative Movies of the Last 25 Years" (to be fair, that list is kind of ridiculous, also citing The Lord of the Rings trilogy, THE DARK KNIGHT, UNITED 93, GROUNDHOG DAY and others that can just as easily, if not more so, be argued as espousing "liberal" values), and conservative political figure of the 1990s, like presidential candidate Bob Dole, commended the film for its supposedly conservative values, and citing it as the reason for the film's success.  While some liberal critics criticized the character of Forrest as "hollow" and "self-congratulatory in his blissful ignorance", some have since gone as far as to critique the film as a "conservative fable" about a man who comes out on top by living by "conservative values" of obedience, simple living and patriotism, and a healthy dose of chance capitalist success, contrasted with Jenny, who in the counterculture movement of drugs and sex nearly destroys herself and dies of what is probably AIDS anyway.
Steve Tisch, one of the film's producers, described the phenomenon as "...all over the political map, people have been calling Forrest their own. But, Forrest Gump isn't about politics or conservative values. It's about humanity, it's about respect, tolerance and unconditional love."  With the possible exception of "tolerance", all the mainstream political opinions would no doubt claim those as their values, and perhaps even exclusive to their faction, so that doesn't help a ton.  However, the filmmakers are insistent that the film is apolitical, despite dealing with such politically-charged topics.  Some of the liberal voices in the debate believe the film is a work of irony, tragically overlooked by conservative readings.  I can see the conservative themes, but to accept them as simple fact, one has to completely dismiss the well-known liberal opinions of the major talents involved, which undoubtedly factor into their work.
Overall, the counterculture of the 1960s-1970s eventually left a bad taste in peoples' mouths as certain negative elements like drugs and promiscuity spiraled out of control, overshadowing positive advances such as civil rights, feminism and welfare programs and colliding with a misguided effort to maintain conservative values expressed in the Vietnam War, and a movie like FORREST GUMP shows a lot of that, with whatever an audience's opinions largely being those they took in with them.  Looking at history through a 1994-1982 frame as the story does though, it isn't hard to see the conservative advantage.

Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump.

Where cinephiles get upset on the other hand, is FORREST GUMP receiving recognition over now-more highly-regarded contenders PULP FICTION and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (the aforementioned National Review article egregiously cited the former as "far more expressive of Hollywood’s worldview" (indicating the sentiment of Hollywood as far-left and amoral), although PULP FICITON prominently embraces religion; SHAWSHANK, on the other hand, is a blatantly liberal cry for prison and legal system reform).  PULP FICTION, one of the early independent filmmaking landmarks of the 1990s, won the Palme d'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and was a more prominent critical darling of 1994, winning a single but notable Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.  Today, PULP FICTION is considered as culturally significant as FORREST GUMP, appearing in the National Film Registry just two years after the latter.  THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, a Stephen King-based prison drama which won no Academy Awards and had a tepid box office performance, was not a very serious contender despite its seven Academy Award nominations, but had a surprisingly successful second life in rentals and cable TV, becoming a long-term word-of-mouth success before notably taking the top rank on IMDb's user ratings.  Ever since then, FORREST GUMP has been struggling to defend its legacy against PULP FICTION and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.  I like PULP FICTION better, but I think I might put SHAWSHANK beneath GUMP (don't hate me for it), at least from where I'm at right now.
Either way, the sweet-natured idiot from the South, with his stupid crew cut, cream-colored suit and box of assorted chocolates has an undeniable resonance, for better and worse.