Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is the eponymous protagonist of a heavily-satirical novel by Winston Groom, and of a 1994 Paramount Pictures film based on the novel. Gump himself was said to have been named after Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The film
The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and tells the story of a mentally challenged man's epic journey through life, passing historical figures and incidents largely unaware of their significance: in the film, Forrest (played by Tom Hanks) calls the police about the Watergate break-in, invents the smiley without realizing it, and makes millions on Apple Computer stock thinking he has invested in produce.
The film was a huge commercial success, although Paramount claimed it was a failure, enabling them to cheat Groom of his share of the profits, and ensuring that he denied them the rights to adapt the novel's sequel, Gump & Co.
The film was praised by many critics as a modern fable. The film won several Academy Awards, including the Academy Award for Directing and the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film's special effects included the, at the time, stunning, near-seamless blending of Gump with footage of various historical figures, a process sometimes referred to as "gumping."
Plot summary of the movie
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Young Forrest Gump was born with crippled legs and was forced to walk with the aid of leg braces, his odd walk being imitated famously by a young guitarist named Elvis Presley. Overcoming this handicap, he got into superb physical shape. His running ability brought him success in college football, and he carried his wounded platoon to safety during a battle in the Vietnam war.
After coming home from the war, he began a shrimp business drawing on advice from his African American army buddy Bubba. His former commander, Lieutenant Dan (Gary Sinise), joined him in the venture, and they took their boat out during Hurricane Carmen. They returned to port to find that all other fishing boats in the area have been destroyed by the storm, giving them an instant monopoly in shrimp and making Forrest a wealthy man. Forrest then gives Bubba's mother what he felt was Bubba's share of the profits; he also buys and tears down the house where his childhood sweetheart, Jenny (Robin Wright), had been abused.
Criticism of the film
Though popular among many, Forrest Gump's warm reception was not universal. Particularly outside the United States, the film was viewed as extended and undeserved praise of ignorant naïveté, a character trait widely associated with Americans in some quarters. Some political liberals also criticised the portrayal of Gump's friend Jenny, whose activisim during the 1960s and experiments with alternative lifestyles and intravenous drugs through the upheavals of the 1970s end with her death from an "unknown illness" (symptoms are indicative of AIDS), while Gump and their son survive. In their view, this aspect of the film was an attack on the positive changes that occurred at that time and the alternative of Gump himself as empty nostalgia for a golden age that never really existed.
Divergence
Much of the beginning of the film is the same in the book - albeit Zemeckis's Gump is far more placid and naïve than Groom's abrasive, judgmental cynic; the film's quote of Life is like a box of chocolates wholly reverses the novel's sentiment of Being an idiot is no box of chocolates.
Later in the book Forrest becomes an astronaut, after which the two stories diverge greatly. For instance, in the novel Gump (after becoming an astronaut) crash-lands on a small jungle island with his crew.
