Forrest Gump

I first watched Forrest Gump on an afternoon when I had nowhere to go, which may be the ideal condition for a film that begins with a man sitting on a bench and talking to whoever happens to sit beside him.

The film moves through wars, elections, protests, businesses, television appearances and cultural changes, yet Forrest rarely behaves as if he is living inside capital-H History. He is usually trying to understand the next person, the next promise, the next task.

I liked that immediately.

We tend to imagine historical periods from above. Dates, presidents, wars, inventions, movements. People living inside those years experience something much less organized. They still miss buses, cook dinner, fall in love, worry about money and misunderstand each other. History happens while daily life is distracted.

Forrest becomes entangled with extraordinary events without becoming impressed by his own importance. At first his simplicity can look like a lack. Over time it becomes a contrast with everyone who cannot stop narrating themselves.

I am very good at building explanations around problems. Many people are. We replay conversations, prepare arguments for discussions that have already ended, imagine alternative outcomes and search for motives until thought is producing only more thought.

Forrest rarely constructs those rooms.

He acts, often because he made a promise.

Bubba talks about shrimp; Forrest listens. Lieutenant Dan is furious; Forrest remains. Jenny disappears; his affection does not transform into an argument about what she owes him.

This does not make him wise in every situation. Simplicity can expose him to people who understand the world more strategically. But it protects him from a particular kind of self-deception: the need to make every action proof of an identity.

The running sequence is my favorite example. Forrest runs because he wants to run. The world finds this unacceptable. People follow him and assume there must be a message. Journalists ask what the running means. Strangers turn movement into philosophy because purposeless action makes us nervous.

Then one day he stops.

The people who needed his action to contain a theory are disappointed.

I remember watching the film again years later with my father. We laughed at different places. He responded more strongly to Lieutenant Dan; I was more interested in Jenny. Afterward we argued about whether Forrest was lucky. My father said luck explained too much. “He also keeps doing things,” he said.

That sentence stayed with me.

Chance shapes the film. A feather moves in the air, people meet, events arrive without permission. But Forrest also keeps choosing what to do next. Destiny and accident do not have to cancel agency.

Jenny became sadder for me on later viewings. The first time I mostly wondered why she kept leaving. Eventually I saw someone whose ability to trust uncomplicated affection had been damaged long before Forrest offered it.

People do not always reject good things because they cannot recognize them.

Sometimes recognition is exactly what frightens them.

By the end, the great public events become less important than a child, a grave, a school bus and a father waiting.

That afternoon when I first watched it, I remained in my chair after the film ended.

I still had nowhere to go.

For once, that felt sufficient.