by Chris Marshall:
Never judge a Best Picture winner based on the quality of
its competition. I brought this point up more than ten posts ago, but the 1994
Academy Awards were a prime example of this phenomenon. Because Forrest Gump won in a year when Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption were both nominated, it’s easy to fall
into the trap of criticizing the film based not on its own merit, but on the
fact that it beat out arguably superior competition.
That’s not to say this is the only criticism of Forrest Gump, of course, but it is a
current of thought I’ve heard expressed before. Yes, I think Pulp Fiction is a better movie[1],
one of the best ever made, but that has nothing to do with the quality of Forrest Gump, which I think is a
perfectly fine film in its own right. Maybe that’s due to sheer repetition; I’ve
mentioned before that I’ve likely seen it more than any other Best Picture
winner. But whatever the reason, I think its quality should only be judged on
criteria intrinsic to the film.
For all his acclaim, it still surprises me that this is the
only winner Tom Hanks has ever appeared in. He also won Best Actor for playing
the title role, his second year in a row to win the top acting award. In this
film, he creates one of the most iconic characters of the last 20 years. With
the possible exception of Titanic, I’d
argue that Forrest Gump is more
ingrained in pop culture than any other Best Picture winner of the 1990s.
Forrest isn’t a smart man, but he still manages to find
himself at or near the center of seemingly every major historical event of the
second half of the 20th century. He teaches young Elvis how to
dance, meets multiple presidents, watches the integration of the University of
Alabama, etc., etc. He’s basically one of the most important men who ever
lived.
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| He's Gump, He's Gump, what's in his head? |
He’s totally oblivious to this, however. All that matters to
him is his friends and family. His mother, Bubba, Lieutenant Dan, and of course,
Jenny. He basically devotes his entire life to her, never realizing how deeply
screwed up of a person she is. Forrest’s childhood, even with the leg braces
and the constant bullying he endured, was idyllic compared to Jenny’s, and he
was simply unable to understand how deeply tortured she was by those demons. At
the end of the film, after Jenny’s death, he has her childhood home bulldozed.
He knows she hated it, but he doesn’t know why.
Most of the events in the movie are extremely far-fetched,
but realism is not one of its goals. It is a portrait of America during a tumultuous
time, shown through the eyes of a man who can’t quite grasp the true importance
happening outside of his own world. In some sense, Forrest represents the
utopian vision many of us have of the past, while Jenny depicts its true, harsh
reality.
Some pundits have claimed that Forrest Gump is a film that promotes conservative values. Gump is a
staunchly conservative man—though completely apolitical—while Jenny’s forays
into the counterculture end up in disaster. This is an oversimplification, but
it gets to the heart of the argument. I don’t believe there is any overt
political significance to the film, conservative or liberal. Jenny would have
been just as damaged no matter which route she took in life, while Forrest’s
conservative values are not the product of reasoned thought. It’s just all he
knows. And for all we know, maybe he delivers an anti-war screed when he loses his
mic at the Vietnam protest. Who’s to say?
[1] I
enjoy The Shawshank Redemption, but I’ve
never been in the “greatest movie of all time” camp that seems to dominate
IMDB.
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