Why Some People Hate Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump. Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

You may, as you move through the world, from time to time encounter people who absolutely fucking hate the 1994 Best Picture winner Forrest Gump. Directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks at the height of his Oscarbaiting powers, the film is about a simple Southern man who experiences many of the important cultural milestones from the 1950s to the 1980s, often figuring prominently in them through happenstance and/or dumb luck. It was a huge commercial and cultural hit.

A lot of, mostly younger, people hate the movie simply because it beat out both Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption for Best Picture, and those two films are sacrosanct to cinephiles who came of age during the Clinton administration. But clearly the world of elderly white Academy voters were not ready for Quentin Tarantino back in 1994. What they wanted to see was the long arc of their own history growing up in the United States reflected back to them through the prism of an impossibly good, decent, physically gifted imbecile. With some cutting edge special effects thrown in. And that’s precisely what they got.

I myself think it is a fantastic film, in the way it is constructed. To modern viewers, the use of digital effects to erase Lieutenant Dan’s legs is no big deal - but considering CGI was in its infancy it was done really well, as this video from Corridor Crew explains. They also inserted Gump digitally into archival footage with real historical figures, like JFK. And the story it tells is, whatever you feel about the thematic content, exceptionally well structured, written and acted. It is simply a delightful film to watch.

Now, is it better than a subversive masterpiece like Pulp Fiction? That is quite subjective, and probably depends a lot on how old you are and your personal tastes. The other, perhaps more valid critique which I didn’t really notice until recently. is that Forrest Gump goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid saying anything at all about the events it depicts. This film literally has nothing to say at all - it’s just a fun, surreal romp through the Greatest Hits of the Woodstock Generation.

It even calls attention to its complete lack of anything to say, when Forrest Gump gets up on the mic during the March on Washington and lays out all of his deepest inner thoughts on the war in Vietnam. At that precise moment the microphone cuts out, and only comes back on with Gump drawling “And that’s all I have to say about that.” This is supposed to be a winking nod to the fact that the simple man of morals must have said something extremely profound, perhaps the most profound thing he’s ever said in his life, and the joke is that we the audience will never get to know what it was.

It’s a fine little joke, but it also fits the essentially empty vessel nature of this movie. Because the movie goes to great lengths to say nothing at all, it allows everybody to project their own meanings onto it. It could be seen as a very conservative film, endorsing the importance of moral integrity and simple family values and military service. By contrast, it is the free spirited drug addict who eventually contracts a fatal disease and dies.

But I don’t really think that is right. I think it’s just easier to create a total blank canvas like Forrest Gump so that these momentous historical events can be projected onto him. If you had a character who was not a blank slate, then I think the structure of the film wouldn’t work. At some point they would be like “Hey, isn’t it pretty coincidental that I’ve been a part of all these major historical events and by the way why do I just accept everything as it happens?”

Gump’s essential emptiness is a necessary plot mechanism, or the story won’t work. In the process, this can make it seem like the film is endorsing conservative values. But it could just as well be that the film is saying conservatives are mindless followers who are ultimately merely spectators to history rather that its makers. The film can say pretty much anything you want it to say, because it doesn’t say anything at all. And that’s a conscious structural choice, it seems to me. Some people really, really don’t like that. For them, they prefer a film that has a lot to say and that is certainly something Quentin Tarantino can help them out with.