Tom Hanks has been eclipsed as our Beloved Everyman by Forrest Gump--and that's not so much an irony as an inevitability, the trajectory of both his and Forrest Gump's director's careers, a strange brew of sugar and brine, offering throwaway fluff one year and lead-pipe bludgeonings the next. And out pops a movie that makes every heart swell in its final fifteen minutes--but earlier hammers away at the American Dream, a series of victories--on battle- and playing-fields, Great Plains open spaces and Gulf Coast waters--all landing randomly in the lap of a moron.
--And I mean that, as Broadway Danny Rose would say, with all due respect. As Forrest makes his way through the second half of the 20th century, he discovers that everything he lacks is given to him, as long as he's willing to keep running. It's as though Being There had been remade by Harper Lee on a dare: "Betcha can't turn Mortimer Snerd into Childe Rowland." Because Forrest does brave many monsters, turns and turns and forges on--and always the Childe, never growing up all the way, the last finally first.
It's the best fantasy I've seen in years, Epic in an old-fashioned way--especially for the viewer, who changes as the journey goes on, even if Forrest doesn't. Hanks never betrays Gump, never makes him to be less or more than he is. It's a blank performance gently colored with the honest ink of a cartoon character, like Zemeckis' Roger Rabbit and friends, as affable an American as Marty McFly stumbling backwards through unyielding years, bullies and jerks at every turn. I'm starting to think of It's a Wonderful Life, where another innocent is ground almost all the way down, until he figures out he's rich--which is, as Forrest notes, good: "One less thing."
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--And I mean that, as Broadway Danny Rose would say, with all due respect. As Forrest makes his way through the second half of the 20th century, he discovers that everything he lacks is given to him, as long as he's willing to keep running. It's as though Being There had been remade by Harper Lee on a dare: "Betcha can't turn Mortimer Snerd into Childe Rowland." Because Forrest does brave many monsters, turns and turns and forges on--and always the Childe, never growing up all the way, the last finally first.
It's the best fantasy I've seen in years, Epic in an old-fashioned way--especially for the viewer, who changes as the journey goes on, even if Forrest doesn't. Hanks never betrays Gump, never makes him to be less or more than he is. It's a blank performance gently colored with the honest ink of a cartoon character, like Zemeckis' Roger Rabbit and friends, as affable an American as Marty McFly stumbling backwards through unyielding years, bullies and jerks at every turn. I'm starting to think of It's a Wonderful Life, where another innocent is ground almost all the way down, until he figures out he's rich--which is, as Forrest notes, good: "One less thing."
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