Forrest Gump (film)

  • Release Date: 1994
  • Director(s): Robert Zemeckis
  • Writer(s): Eric Roth
  • Principal Actors and Roles: Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump); Gary Sinise (Lieutenant Dan Taylor); Robin Wright (Jenny Curran); Sally Field (Mrs. Gump); Michael Connor Humphreys (Young Forrest); Mykelti Williamson (Bubba Blue)
  • Book / Story Film Based On: Forrest Gump by Winston Groom

Forrest Gump, a comedic and dramatic film, is based on a 1986 novel by Winston Groom. Focusing on the experiences of a man with an IQ of 75, the film is set against the turbulent period that stretched from the 1950s to the 1980s. With well-crafted special effects that include archival footage, the movie puts protagonist Gump in significant historical moments, such as when George Wallace defended segregation at an Alabama school and a Vietnam War protest. Gump also meets three presidents and the cultural icons Elvis Presley and John Lennon. Director Robert Zemeckis effectively uses these scenes as a backdrop to the film’s human drama—Gump’s life and relationships. Tom Hanks had earlier solidified his stardom with the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle and in an-Oscar winning performance in the drama Philadelphia. In Forrest Gump, he won acclaim—and another Oscar—for his portrayal of the gentle, steadfast title character. He was ably supported by Sally Fields as Gump’s mother, Robin Wright as his lifelong love Jenny Curran, and Gary Sinise as his platoon commander in Vietnam, Lieutenant Daniel Taylor.

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Forrest Gump was the feel-good hit of the year, attracting audiences in huge numbers and topping The Lion King as the number-one box-office hit for 1994. It became a cultural phenomenon. As Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote soon after its release, "You see them—folks of all ages and both sexes—floating out of the movie theater on waves of honorable sentiment. . . . No question: one more audience has been Gumped" (1994, para. 1). Some of Gump’s aphorisms turned into popular catchphrases, most notably "Stupid is as stupid does" and "My momma always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.’"

Plot

The movie opens with Gump beginning to tell his life story to a stranger at a bus stop. The rest of the film is similarly delivered, with his voice-over introducing and commenting on scenes and with occasional cutaways to him and different listeners.

Gump recounts being fitted with leg braces that were meant to straighten his crooked spine. Gump meets Jenny Curran, and the two become friends. Years later, he earns a college football scholarship due to his impressive running speed. After graduating, he enlists in the army and befriends Bubba Blue. Gump promises to be first mate on the shrimp boat Blue plans to buy after the two men return home from the Vietnam War. In a fight, Gump saves many men from his platoon, but Lieutenant Taylor is left legless and embittered, and Blue dies.

In Washington, DC, to receive the Medal of Honor, Forrest accidentally joins an antiwar rally and has a chance reunion with Curran, although she returns to California. Forrest is assigned by the army to special services due to his prowess at ping-pong, and this assignment takes him to Communist China. After his return, Gump sees an even more cynical Taylor. When Gump talks about his plan to buy a shrimp boat, his former commanding officer sarcastically promises to be his first mate.

When Gump ‘s enlistment ends, he returns home. Given $25,000 for endorsing one company’s ping-pong paddle, he buys a shrimp boat and is joined by Taylor. The two men struggle to make the business a success until a hurricane destroys all of the local boats but theirs. This disaster prompts the growth of their own business. Gump returns home when his mother becomes ill, and when she dies, he leaves the shrimp business to Taylor.

Curran arrives, tired of her life of partying and drugs and spends a brief, idyllic time with Gump. She refuses to marry him, although they make love before she leaves again.

Back in the present, Gump responds to a request from Curran and travels to Savannah, Georgia. She tells him that he is the father of her son and that she is terminally ill. They marry, with a happier Taylor on hand. Curran dies. In the final scene, Gump watches as his son gets on a school bus.

Significance

Forrest Gump was a hit from the start, taking in $24 million in box office receipts in its first weekend and essentially matching that in the second. Made for $55 million, the film grossed more than six times that figure domestically in 1994, giving it the top box office spot for 1994. It also made nearly $350 million more worldwide.

The movie was also a critical success. Roger Ebert praised director Robert Zemeckis and the special-effects team for the "ingenious" blending of historical footage with the live Gump; the screenplay by Eric Roth for having "the complexity of modern fiction, not the formulas of modern movies" (1994, para. 2); and Hanks’s performance "as a breathtaking balancing act between comedy and sadness" (para. 3). Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers called the movie a "heart-breaker of oddball wit and startling grace" (1994, para. 1) and similarly lauded Hanks’s performance. Times’s Corliss credited Hanks for underplaying the role until the emotional climax, when he "releases his feelings … [and] the scene gushes like a geyser" (para. 7).

The film was a major winner at the Academy Awards in 1994, taking home the awards for best picture, best director (Zemeckis), best actor (Hanks), best adapted screenplay (Roth), best editing (Arthur Schmidt), and best special effects. It was nominated for seven other awards as well. Zemeckis and Hanks also captured the Golden Globe awards that year. The American Film Institute rated Forrest Gump as the seventy-sixth best American movie of all time in 2007, and the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2011.

Perhaps because of its popularity and portrayal of history, Forrest Gump has also been studied as a way of understanding popular views of American society and culture. Travers saw the film in this way, crediting Zemeckis for delivering a powerful message about "the hypocrisy of postwar America" in which "the peace-love pretensions of the ’60s are skewered as neatly as the greed decades that follow" (1994, para. 4). Jennifer Hyland Wang (2000) explained how political conservatives appropriated the film and guided the popular interpretation of it to critique counterculture of the 1960s and the antiwar movements. Steven Scott (2001) viewed the film as a postmodern critique of American society, arguing that "America is Gump, bumbling and simple-minded, if apparently well-meaning; more or less moral on an individual level . . . but finally, . . . opportunistic, exploitative, and capitalistic" (29–30).

Awards and nominations

Won

  • Academy Award (1994) Best Film Editing ()
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Visual Effects ()
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Picture
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Director: Robert Zemeckis
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Actor: Tom Hanks
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Screenplay (Adapted): Eric Roth
  • Golden Globe (1994) Best Motion Picture (Drama)

Nominated

  • Academy Award (1994) Best Art Direction ()
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Cinematography ()
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Makeup ()
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Original Score ()
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Sound ()
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Sound Effects Editing ()
  • Academy Award (1994) Best Supporting Actor: Gary Sinise

Bibliography

Byers, Thomas B. "History Re-membered." Modern Fiction Studies 42.2 (1996): 419-45. Print.

Corliss, Richard. "The World According to Gump." Time 1 Aug. 1995. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. <http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=9f239865-bed5-4f84-8e9f-61b133519857%40sessionmgr4002&vid=0&hid=4214&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=9407267518&db=aph>.

Ebert, Roger. "Forrest Gump." RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC, 6 July 1994. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. <http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/forrest-gump-1994>.

"Forrest Gump (1994)." Internet Movie Database. Amazon, 2015. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109830/?ref‗=nv‗sr‗1>.

"Forrest Gump (1994)." Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Turner Entertainment Networks, 2015. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. <http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/75434/Forrest-Gump/>.

Groom, Winston. Forrest Gump. New York: Vintage, 2012. Print.

Groom, Winston. Gump & Co. New York: Pocket Books, 2010. Print.

Lavery, David. "‘No Box of Chocolates’: The Adaptation of Forrest Gump." Literature Film Quarterly 25.1 (1997): 18-22. Print.

Scott, Steven D. "‘Like a Box of Chocolates’: ‘Forrest Gump’ and Postmodernism." Literature Film Quarterly 29.1 (2001): 23-31.

Travers, Peter. "Forrest Gump." Rolling Stone. RollingStone.com, 6 July 1994. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. <http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/forrest-gump-19940706>.

Wang, Jennifer Hyland. "‘A Struggle of Contending Stories’: Race, Gender, and Political Memory in Forrest Gump." Cinema Journal 39.3 (2000): 92-115. Print. Available at <http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=5&sid=d217ad66-3c1a-42cc-9008-9b7f49c04297%40sessionmgr4002&hid=4114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=6914976&db=aph>.