Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump (1994) won six Oscars and has attracted two completely different readings ever since. The first: a kind man with a low IQ happens to be present at every major moment in modern American history. Warm, moving, optimistic. The second: the film is not about Forrest at all, it is about Jenny. Forrest never changes and never questions anything, and he is rewarded for precisely that. Jenny joins every movement of her era and pays for each one. Read this way the film is openly hostile to the nineteen sixties counterculture. Both readings are in the text and which one you see can change between viewings. That is why it has stayed in argument for thirty years. Technically it pushed what was possible at the time. The sequences inserting Hanks into archive footage were new then. It runs 142 minutes and moves easily. Good for: emotional American drama, stories that travel across decades, and Tom Hanks. Fine with family. Less good for: it contains abuse, addiction and war. Its handling of intellectual disability is also criticised now, with reason, and that criticism is worth carrying while you watch.