Forrest Gump: Stupidity Of Smartness

You never know who you might sit next to on a bus stop bench. Could be a simple musician or a business tycoon. Perhaps a war veteran or world-class musician.

Or maybe — just maybe — he's all of the above.

In a part that challenges an actor in every aspect, Hanks plays a kind of a deranged man whose very barrenness makes him an ideal audience prism through which the key socio-political events of the ‘50s and early ‘80s, the historical events in Forrest Gump, are portrayed.

Lacking any ideals or beliefs, Gump is the unyielding innocent moving in a state of grace through a nation which acts on its whims & fancies, an Everyman who acts instinctively in an age defined by political indecisiveness.

The character portrayed by Tom Hanks, having an IQ of just 75 but the will & determination greater than any living soul manages & survives every major event in American history through the 1950s and the 1980s that he unknowingly becomes a part of using honesty and kindness as his shields.

Raised in Alabama by his mother Sally field, who molds his posture by making him wear braces, who doesn’t get influenced by what the world thinks about her, who makes him understand what stupid actually means – "Stupid is as stupid does". Her patience and resilience eventually gets rewarded when her son overcomes difficult challenges and gets rewarded for it by the President. It’s the sheer hard work of her mother & jenny that her son is able to break free and run like the wind.

His speed gets noticed by a football coach and he gets a college football scholarship, in a life story that eventually becomes a gag about his good fortune. From a football hero to the Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, to being the Table tennis champion (Ping Pong), to being the shrimp boat captain, and finally the man who runs across the entire United States. It’s a journey that just keeps on moving.

Does he quite understand everything what happens to him? Not so. But he does understand everything he needs to know, and the rest, as the movie suggests, is just excess.

The captivating life journey of a pure & innocent tossed around through three decades of America's turbulent modern history makes for an original, appealing and inspirational story. Its enthralling potential only falters when Director Robert Zemeckis' speed with clever special effects outpaces his narrative capabilities.

It is still Zemeckis’s most emotionally satisfying work to date, though, and however mildly or sharply one is struck by its dramatic flaws, there would few who wouldn’t endorse this movie such is the entertainment value and Stand-out performance of lead actor Tom Hank who plays “Forrest Gump”

Hanks outdo him in every department with utterly enduring work. Here he brilliantly portrays retarded & slow tenacity without ever patronizing.

Sinise and Williamson are excellent in their individual supporting roles, while Field (Forrest’s endearing mom) is a character who grows strength to strength in every passing scene.

Despite its flaws of being seemingly excessive at times, this movie is simply unmissable; the film is a wisely goofy commentary on the stupidity of smartness.