Oscar winning, tear jerker of a comedy ‘Forest Gump’ is both magical and passionate; a film to replenish your energy and refresh your outlook on life entirely. A film that shows morally dubious material transformed through ‘Robert Zemeckis’ shrewdness and technical skills into a truly unique and poetic American Comedy, and with such phenomenon commercial success suggesting hearts were touched worldwide. The hero of the film; A mentally handicapped man (Tom Hanks), but one blessed with innate decency and amazing courage. Forrest may be simple, but his heart is definitely in the right place. ‘Forrest Gump’ implies that we can all be just as good and patriotic as Forrest, if only we had that courage to be simple and naive.
Hanks portrays a character similar to that in one of his first major films ‘Big’, representing a return to the themes from that earlier film. In this case the character remains a child in spirit as well as heart, it’s just his physical appearance that matures, and Hanks is called upon once more to play the innocent just like Philadelphia and BIG.
As a character, Forrest belongs to the same type of idiot savant that informed Rain Man (1988), which brought a second Oscar to Dustin Hoffman. Brilliantly, ‘Forrest Gump’ is played by Tom Hanks, the only actor who could truly play the role without condescension. Hanks develops a character limited in consciousness but not in feeling, hence facilitating the audience' identification with him. As the glue holding the episodic film together, Hanks never allows Forrest's eccentricities to become a comic caricature, a rare talent.
Forrest's charmed and unbelievable life leads him everywhere and anywhere, from the White House, where Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon greet him amiably, to an Alabama boarding house, where he's seen dancing with the yet to be discovered Elvis Presley. A brilliant pace presented by Zemeicks, the film establishing forest as an accidental emblem of