Thoughts on Forrest Gump...

When I first revealed to my best friend what my favourite movie was, it must have been back in 2010, she laughed at me a little. I was taken aback that she had never, EVER seen Forrest Gump (but then, she’s not seen The Lion King, so I rest my case. Love ya girl).

When you haven’t seen Forrest Gump, the name kinda sounds a little whimsical, funny... maybe even silly - like it’s not too much of a deep and intelligent 2-and-a-bit-hours watch. However!

Forrest Gump has always touched me in a way no other film has come close to – 12 Years a Slave moved me in so many ways, but I’d say it’s second to Forrest Gump. This is because Gump gives me this crazy feeling that I haven’t felt as a result of watching anything before in my life, and I don’t think I ever will feel it from any other film. I don’t know what it is about this movie, but it gives me this familiar feeling. It makes me cry at odd points throughout, despite my having watched it no doubt 50+ times. I cry in different places every time. I can think of a character and burst into tears. I can quote it in any situation. I adore all the actors, admire the special effects team and really geekishly love deciphering the subtext and metaphorical ideas put forward in the film...

I remember the first time I watched Forrest Gump. I was at my Dad’s house in a small corner of the Isle of Wight, and we were channel surfing, trying to find something good to watch as a family on Friday night. This was in early 2009 as far as I remember, around 15 years after the film had been released back in 1994. We switched to Film 4 and I was like, ‘what the HELL is Forrest Gump, Dad? Lolololol!!!11!!!’

What a young fool I was.

It was probably due to the fact I was introduced to the film at the scene where Forrest’s Momma is *ahem* giving her everything for her son to get into a good school (and not ‘some special school where they learn how to retread tires’) that my dim preconceptions reared their ugly heads, but I was sorely mistaken, and loved every minute of that film from that very first sitting. My Dad told me I’d love it if I just watched, and I’m so glad we did that night (hey, with the theme of fate and destiny throughout, maybe it was my fate that I was to watch the film that night, become obsessed with it and write this blog entry many years after... crazy huh?). I WEPT LIKE A MOTHERBITCH.

So due to my love of lists, I have compiled a few reasons why I LOVE Forrest Gump, and personally find it unsurpassable in terms of EVERYTHING A FILM COULD EVER BE.

1)      The soundtrack – okay, let’s just get this first one out of the way. THE SOUNDTRACK FOR THIS MOVIE IS THE BEST MOVIE SOUNDTRACK I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED. I’ll sub-list a few right here, right now.

*clears throat*

- All Along the Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix
- California Dreamin’ – The Mamas and the Papas
- Mrs Robinson – Simon and Garfunkel
- Freebird – Lynyrd Skynyrd (oh my god)
- San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) – Scott McKenzie
- Blowin’ In The Wind – Joan Baez (Jenny alludes to it and sings it, and it’s on the CD)
- TOO MANY SONGS BY THE DOORS TO LIST
- (I Don’t Know Why) But I Do – Clarence Frogman Henry
- Hound Dog – Elvis Presley
- Get Down Tonight – KC & The Sunshine Band
- Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac

And so on. I rest my case. The soundtrack is the ULTIMATE soundtrack of the 50s, 60s and 70s (though unfortunately The Beatles aren’t in there), and that’s where the best music came from. I think, if Gump didn’t have this soundtrack, it might just be a completely different movie. I don’t want to say that it might be a worse movie, because I still love the original Alan Silvestri theme, but I think that using the music of each decade as time moves on really adds to the reality of what happened during those periods – the civil rights and hippie movement, the Vietnam war, the flower children, the aftermath of that and the junkies that were left with their drug habits, the music that represented the feelings of those times – of the freedom, youth, the excitement, the new opportunities and social developments, the feeling of change and revolution in the air... It must have been an exciting time to be Forrest and Jenny’s age during those decades - and I spend a lot of time personally imagining what it might have been like *sad I know*. Forrest Gump and its soundtrack help me to do that. If I listen to ‘Freebird’, I see Jenny on that balcony reeling in depression from her heroin habit and abusive relationships, and if I hear Hendrix’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’ I imagine the soldiers in Vietnam enduring the sun and then the relentless rain. The music is a vehicle that helps me to really feel what was happening to the characters, and all the different routes life could go during those special decades.

2)      The snapshot of the 20^th century, its highs and lows –

Vietnam is a big part of Forrest’s life, when as soon as he graduates college he is sent packing to training without much thinking in between. I think Zemeckis handled it really well. None of us want another film focussed on war and the battle – and Gump doesn’t give us that. Instead it stays in keeping with its theme of love, and shows the devastation caused to Forrest’s friends and fellow soldiers, from his own simple point of view. We see the parts of Vietnam that we don’t see in other films. We also see the devotion Forrest has to Jenny and his loyalty to her words. We also see just a snapshot of the actual war, and instead see more character development for Lieutenant Dan and Bubba, and the aftermath of the war for invalided veterans. Vietnam also links to the theme of fate within the film, because if Forrest hadn’t been drafted, he would also have never saved Lieutenant Dan or met Bubba, would never have won the medal of honour and been able to go back to Washington to cross paths with Jenny once again, he would never have become a shrimp boat captain or a ping pong champion... It’s a strange thought that that one event mapped out Forrest’s entire destiny, just because of his determination in each opportunity that is presented.

 

      We also see the protests and the hippie culture, and also sadly the way some of the flower children became junkies when the 70s arrived. We see Forrest debunk Watergate unwittingly. We see Forrest meet (through the medium of INCREDIBLE EDITING) all the presidents of those decades, we see the civil rights movement happen briefly – something I would have loved to have been there to feel happening. We see the creation of Apple Corporation, AND LETS JUST THROW IN GUMP HIMSELF ON THE DICK CAVETT SHOW INSPIRING THE LYRICS TO IMAGINE BY JOHN LENNON, BECAUSE THAT GETS ME EVERY TIME.

(along with ‘one day, that nice young man from England was going home to see his son... for no particular reason, somebody decided to shoot him’ SOBS)

3)      The Characters, OH MY GOD –

I really want to start with Jenny, because she’s probably my favourite character ever: I think Jenny is a symbol for ‘we accept the love we think we deserve’ – she is such a complex character. As a child she was sexually abused by her father, and so thinks she deserves nothing more than the abusive relationships she gets herself into, and after experimenting in the sixties she continues using the drugs that keep her numb to it all. That’s why she denies Forrest’s love throughout and tells him that he doesn’t know what love is; really, it’s Jenny who doesn’t know what love is. She is a real symbol of someone who can’t understand love because she’s never seen it. All Forrest wants to do is take her in, heal her and love her – there’s nothing difficult about that at all; it’s just what he’s done from the day he met her on the school bus. Even when Jenny admits that she loves Forrest, she feels scared and has to run from it because she believes she isn’t worthy of the profound, unbreakable love he has for her. Jenny has never thought to accept something that she might actually deserve because since she was a kid all she has seen are bad relationships and bad love.
Jenny is also a symbol of women’s newfound freedom in the 60s. I have heard so many people say to me: ‘Jenny’s a slut!!!!111!!’ but let’s think; this was the 1960s. Women were finally allowed to express and own their own bodies and sexuality without being judged because of the introduction of the contraceptive pill. Time for a grumble about this day and age, because nowadays we seem to have regressed back to the 1950s shame in sexual expression, but I digress. Women could have more sex, be freer and be more of an equal to men in terms of sexuality for the first time ever. Jenny is the embodiment of the woman who owned herself, who owned her sexuality and owned her ability to walk in and out of relationships just as a man might, and exercise her right to everything a man could do. Plus, she just has a series of partners, it’s not like she just sleeps around.
I see Jenny as anything but the traditional Hollywood stereotypes of women in cinema. She doesn’t just accept the groping advances of the men in the club she works at, but is purely doing the job because of her aspirations to be a folk singer and her drive for success. She never marries until she chooses – she even proposes to Forrest herself, turning the typical on its head once again because it’s only when she feels ready to get married, not the man in the narrative. She’s the complete antithesis of pretty much every female character that has been before. She’s real, gritty, she did what she wanted to do, she lived for herself and what she thought she deserved – not what a man thought she deserved, she left men – they didn’t leave her, and she stood up to bullies for Forrest.  

 

To me, she's a symbol of the best decade there ever was.

 

Lieutenant Dan: Lieutenant Dan is a symbol of loyalty throughout Forrest Gump. He is always a man of his word, despite being stuck in the somewhat stubborn mindset of lieutenant. When he says he’ll be Forrest’s first mate, he goes through with it. Dan is truly a very noble character. Dan is also GREAT for quote-ability – I use ‘that’s just perfect’ and ‘yes, I know that’ on a daily basis.

 

Forrest: I might be going COMPLETELY Film Studies student about this, but I see Forrest as a kind of Christ-like figure for the people surrounding him, as his Momma is to him. I think Tom Hanks said: ‘Forrest believes in 3 things; God, his Momma and Jenny, and everything else is filtered through those 3 things’. The feather also poses quite a theological idea, but I saw it mainly in Forrest’s relationship with Lieutenant Dan.

Basically, I thought to myself first of all that Dan mentions God and Jesus a LOT for a supposed non-believer. He asks Forrest ‘have you found Jesus yet?’ on a desperately sad, dingy Christmas Eve at his apartment with a bottle of drink. When he joins Forrest on the shrimp catching boat and tells him to pray for shrimp, he still goes to church despite coming across as a non-believer. Dan’s costume goes from clean cut to Jesus-like when he meets Forrest in New York, with long hair and a beard. When he has his new legs, he’s suddenly clean shaven and short haired – almost like he’s been given a rebirth by thanking Forrest for saving his life. And when Lieutenant Dan finally thanks Forrest for saving his life, he swims out and the sky and water are almost white. I see that as a metaphor for Heaven, Christ and finding peace. Also, Christ could heal cripples – Dan is healed in a way by Forrest allowing him into his shrimp business and giving him a new lease of life rather than sitting in his dingy flat all day, every day.

I also got this whole Christ idea from Forrest doing his run. I compared it to Jesus’ walk through the desert – JC walked through the desert for 40 days and 40 nights to find his God given purpose and have his former life revealed to him. Gump ran to let off emotional steam over Jenny, put the past behind him and find a sense of purpose now that he had no Momma and no Jenny in that big old house. Ultimately he became a symbol of hope for thousands of people, even stating that it ‘gave people hope’.

4)      The themes throughout –

Hope, the determination to never give up, doing your best in whatever opportunity life throws at you along the path. How, if you do good things with honest, compassionate intentions you can never be called stupid or wrong, because stupid is as stupid does. Unrequited love, friendship, fate and destiny. The way our lives and our friends lives can and will pan out completely differently to one another as Forrest, Jenny, Lt Dan and Bubba’s all did. Forrest had known Jenny since primary school and yet he ended up a war veteran and she ended up a singer, flower child, hippie, junkie and eventually a mother.
I love how Forrest Gump also poses the questions: do we make our own destiny, are we all here by accident floating around and making our own way, or do we have a destiny set out? Was life supposed to happen that way, or did it happen like that because that’s the way the feather blew? Sally Fields actually said in a documentary, that Forrest is an example of life being there to be had, and that it’s just a matter of reaching out and grabbing it.

5)      Finally, this...
“You died on a Saturday morning, and I had you buried under our tree. And I had that house of your father’s bulldozed to the ground. Momma always said that dying was a part of life. I sure wish it wasn’t. Little Forrest is doing just fine. He’s about to start school again soon. I make his breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, make sure he combs his hair and brushes his teeth every day. I’m teaching him how to play ping-pong. He’s really good! We fish a lot, and every night we read a book and he’s just so smart, Jenny. You’d be so proud of him. I am. He wrote you a letter, but he says I can’t read it, I’m not supposed to so I’ll just leave it here for you. Jenny, I don’t know if Momma was right or if it’s Lieutenant Dan; I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental like on a breeze. But I think... maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time. I miss you, Jenny. If there’s anything you need, I won’t be far away.”

 

I cried typing that out. I mouth the words along with Forrest every time I watch the film because I think it’s just such a heart wrenching, beautiful piece of script work which captures the essence of what I feel love is so perfectly – of wanting to continue giving everything you have despite physically not being able to anymore. Above everything else, I think Forrest Gump has made me question and think about love more than anything has before. I've decided since watching the film that I’ve not ever been as devoted to a person as much as Forrest was to Jenny, from the day he met her to the day she died.

 

Forrest cherishes Jenny. She is his goddess, his angel. He takes care of her and works hard for her even when she seems a pain. Their love was the kind of love that brought out the best in both people involved - where you give up your own selfish needs to do anything to bring a smile to that person’s face, because their smile becomes your smile. Their happiness becomes your happiness. Their pain is your pain, and you overcome obstacles together to prevent that pain in the future.

I know that the film and novel are complete fiction, and that it’s unrealistic in its narrative, but if I would want any type of lover it would be someone who somewhat emulates Forrest. His compassion for Jenny is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and it’s not even real – which is the sad thing. My favourite line is that last one in the monologue: ‘if there’s anything you need, I won’t be far away’. It astounds me that Forrest still wants to provide for Jenny even though there is nothing he can really give her anymore. He has given almost everything, and still finds it in his heart to want to give more. I think it’s his selflessness that brings me to tears, and how in the end he lost out the most by losing his Jenny.

 

That’s what more human beings need; carefree, selfless and undivided love for all of their brothers and sisters. We are all of the same species when it comes down to it; disregard race, gender, religion, social class, whatever causes the poison and toxicity, because we are all as vulnerable as each other when we turn out the lights at night. We could all be the Jenny at some point in our life in some way or another, but we all have the opportunity to become the Lieutenant Dan. We have the ability to believe in ourselves and love, just like Forrest did. We all have the ability to do great things; whether we’re smart or dumb, short or tall, big or small, slow or fast, disabled or completely healthy. Life is great, you just have to reach out, grab it, and make it great and worthwhile by making the most of every opportunity – just like Forrest did.

I needed to get these thoughts down somewhere, and I thought my blog would be the best place to do so. It's honestly such an inspiring movie to me - these words don't even sum up the emotion, the love and the familiar feeling I get when I watch it. It's a movie I will never get tired of.

I'll  leave you with one of my favourite moments from the movie, and one that makes me cry sometimes when I watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2QGUkVqv-M

'Our destiny is defined by how we deal with the chance elements of our life.’
 
Peace and Love <3