Forest gump
The film starts with ‘the feather’ falling on Forrest’s iconic dirty shoes. He told the stranger sitting beside him,” My mama always said you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes, where they going, where they been”. This statement makes it obvious that he had traveled much, and that he didn’t mind any social stigma coming to meet the love of his life, Jenny. Forrest with an IQ of 75 finds himself unintentionally affecting various historical incidents of the 20th century United States.
The first shoes he got were leg braces. His mother was smart to rent out their house for passers-by and Young Forrest met Elvis Presley showing him some dance moves which Elvis later adopted as his signature move. These leg braces made Gump witness the power of his legs to sprint very fast for long distances taking him places. This eventually got him into the University of Alabama under coach Bear Bryant (played by Sonny Shroyer) playing for the All-American team which also coincided with him witnessing the George Wallace case of blocking the desegregation of the Blacks. His performance with the football team also gave him the chance to meet J.F. Kennedy in a B&W scene which is a CGI edit of archived footage embedding Tom Hanks into handshaking with the president and lip-syncing. Every meeting with the presidents was deemed funny and impressive.
The next arc is his recruitment into the Army which coincided with Jenny’s character reveal. She had been physically abused by her father and this led to her having a bad taste in boyfriends, indulging in adult bars, drugs, and other wastes of life. She led a very unstable and suicidal life although it all not being her fault. Unlike Forrest, Jenny was never shown real love and care which made her seek it desperately, unseeing the fact that everyone was trying to take advantage of her and the cycle goes on. She pushed Forrest away because she felt he was too pure and it would only corrupt him to be with her even if her feelings for Forrest were real which was later revealed at the ending parts of the movie. During his tenure as Private Gump, Lieutenant Dan commanded the 9th platoon into the Vietnam War. They got ambushed and Forrest ran to the river banks. He came back to save his dearest friend Bubba (Benjamin Buford Blue) but instead saved Lieutenant Dan and some of his platoonmates. He, at last, found Bubba in a critical condition and Bubba died by the river banks.
On his stay at the hospital when he got shot in the buttocks, he met the Crippled Lieutenant Dan and found his talent in Ping Pong. He got the Medal of Honour for his heroism from President Lyndon B. Johnson. He perfected his Ping Pong skills, making him a War Hero and a sports celebrity at the same time.He meets a lot of icons including Abbie Hoffman at the anti-war protest at the Capitals, the then President Nixon, and John Lennon on The Dick Cavett Show influencing the song ‘Imagine’. He also reunites with Jenny who was living a hippie lifestyle and they strolled around the Capital ending at the Black Panther camp where he got into a small scuffle. He gave his Medal of Honour to Jenny and parted ways with her again, Jenny making the peace sign from the back of the van.
In the meantime, he got discharged from the army, ran straight back home, and found himself endorsing a ping pong paddle-making company. He got $25,000 from the endorsement, which he used to get his shrimping boat ‘Jenny’ in Bayou La Batre to keep the promise he made to his best friend Bubba. Soon after, Lieutenant Dan also joined as his first mate keeping another promise he made to Forrest at his apartment on New Years’ Eve. One fateful night, when every boat got recked due to Hurricane Carmen, they were the sole survivor. This led to the duo becoming millionaires. Forrest got a letter from Lieutenant Dan investing in Apple which he thought is some fruit company. He shared half of his earnings with Bubba’s family. And, he returned to his mother who was on a deathbed and she died of cancer.
Forrest was cool and kept a simple job of lawn mowing contracts. Jenny too came back to him during her recovery from drugs and abuse. They had some intimate times together, threw stones at Jenny’s childhood home, and Forrest proposes to which jenny declined,” You don’t want to marry me”. The statement clearly shows how jenny tries to get away from Forrest to not corrupt him even though they later made love and she confesses she loved him. The next morning, she took a taxi and drove off.
Forrest, finding the Medal of Honour on the table, and Jenny gone from sight, for the next three years ran for places. He got to the ocean, then ran to another ocean. Ocean after ocean, he made headlines as the guy who ran across the country. Many followed, many inspired, and many profited. Suddenly one day, he just stopped and his reason was that he was tired and had no particular reason but the fact is that he tried to heal from the heartbreak in his own way. He came back to find a letter from Jenny asking him to come down to Georgia.
This led to the scene at the start of the movie which finally is him waiting for a bus to go to Jenny. When the bench-mate told him that the address is just a few blocks away, he ran to be surprised with Jenny waiting for him and the little child being his. They went back to Greenbow and got married. Jenny died due to an unknown disease (it is not mentioned but the disease is widely acclaimed to be hepatitis C). Forrest buried his love under their tree, told her that he bulldozed his father’s home, and took care of Little Forrest. The movie ends with Forrest seeing his son off to his first day at school.
Appreciation: The usage of CGI to lip-sync the real archived footage was so incredible while at the same time made those scenes funny as heck. When Jenny first came on stage featuring Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowing In The Wind’ and the time she tried to suicide putting on the tracks of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird which rather puts the depressing scene into a highway of mixed emotions, makes the movie a great selector of the soundtrack. The perfect portrayal of Forrest being immune to politics, religion, and other social complicacy while instead of being focussed on core values of being a human, like kindness, understanding, acceptance, recuperation are eye-openers. The feather is a great message as to how the movie depicts life. Life is a box of chocolate, you don’t know what you’re going to get. So as the feather, maybe it had the destiny to fall onto Forrest’s shoes, or maybe it was to continue floating in the breeze, or maybe both. Life is like the feather.
Depreciation:There are instances of unrealistic happenings, such as a car not catching up to a runner on its legs. And the shrimping boat driving by itself, also in the wrong direction.
Social Relevance:First of all, the movie is completely non-political and non-conservative at the same time, and also conservative to a point. In our society, where there is a lot of increase in politics and non-conservative movements, the movie would be deemed pivotal to change the mindset and focus more on the core values of human life.
Forrest had been to several key events and made himself a celebrity all along with the movie. This attempts to teach the coming generations that social stigma shouldn’t be a matter, and that you have to do what you have to do. “You’re still Lieutenant Dan”, Forrest to Lieutenant Dan when he questioned about his destiny and also “Aren’t I going to be me?”, to Jenny. It’s as simple as that, stupid as is stupid does.
The time when Forrest came back from China and had an interview with John Lennon, he told the Chinese didn’t go to church and that made John think and speak out that they had no religion In no way is church connected to whether a place has religion or not. This sense of judging anything from hearing something half is an incorrect way of livelihood and it should be abandoned.Lastly, when Forrest met lieutenant dan at his apartment, he told about all those preachers,” Jesus this, Jesus that”. What we can learn from this is that many real-life preachers who say God this, God that without even listening wholeheartedly, or giving a practically possible and logical understanding like Forrest did which Lieutenant Dan to thank for saving his life later on.