Forrest Gump (1994) review

Forrest Gump is a film about a man who is present for everything and comprehends nothing, and the film's central trick is that his incomprehension is presented as wisdom. Whether that is charming or sinister depends entirely on how you read the ending.

The Structure and the Gimmick

The film is a picaresque: Forrest moves through the Vietnam War, the ping-pong diplomacy era, the anti-war movement, the Black Panther Party, the Watergate scandal, and the early tech boom, always accidentally at the centre of events. The historical footage integration, achieved through digital compositing that was genuinely pioneering in 1994, is seamless enough that it still holds up.

Zemeckis structures the film around Jenny, who drifts in and out of Forrest's life as a counterpoint. She is the one who engages with the era — drugs, protest, abuse — and she is punished for it. Forrest, who engages with nothing, is rewarded. That contrast is the film's actual subject, and it is far more pointed than the film's reputation suggests.

Read more about drama cinema in our Drama genre hub, explore the work of Robert Zemeckis in our directors section, or see where this film lands in best films of the 1990s.

Hanks and the Performance Problem

Hanks won his second consecutive Oscar for this, and the performance is technically remarkable. He maintains the accent and the physicality without ever breaking, and he makes Forrest genuinely likeable rather than a caricature. The problem is that the film asks the audience to accept Forrest's lack of interiority as a form of grace, which requires the viewer to stop asking what Forrest wants.

The supporting cast is stronger than the film's reputation credits. Gary Sinise's Lieutenant Dan is the film's most interesting character — a man destroyed by a war and forced to make peace with a country that does not care — and his arc carries more weight than Forrest's. Robin Wright's Jenny is underwritten, and the film's treatment of her is the clearest evidence of its conservative instincts.

Technical Achievement

The visual effects work is the film's most durable element. The compositing of Hanks into archival footage — the Kennedy handshake, the Johnson Medal of Honor ceremony, the Lennon interview — was achieved with a combination of rotoscoping, digital manipulation, and practical stand-ins, and it is executed with a restraint that modern de-aging effects frequently lack.

Alan Silvestri's score is one of the great populist film scores, and the soundtrack's use of period music is the film's most effective historical shorthand. The feather motif, which bookends the film and reappears throughout, is a rare case of an obvious symbol being used without embarrassment.

The Politics

The film's political stance is that engagement is dangerous and passivity is rewarded. Forrest goes to Vietnam because he is told to and is decorated. Jenny protests and is destroyed. The anti-war movement is depicted through the lens of an abusive boyfriend. The Black Panther Party is a punchline. These are choices, and they add up to a coherent and specific worldview.

That is not necessarily a flaw. A film is allowed to have a politics, and Zemeckis' film is more honest about its nostalgia than most of its contemporaries. But the widespread reading of it as an apolitical film about a nice man is a misreading, and it is worth naming the film's actual argument. It is a conservative film that succeeded by being charming enough that nobody noticed.

Themes and ideas

• Innocence and American nostalgia
• Chance vs. destiny
• The cost of engagement
• Who deserves reward