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A few notes on the piano, a white feather flying in the sky, a girl sitting on a bench to catch her breath next to a strange and elegant guy. And then the guy who at a certain point lets himself go into a philosophical reflection: "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get...", as mom used to say.
How many times have you heard this phrase? Because it has now entered the collective imagination, into popular culture.
Forrest Gump is a film that has entered the history of cinema, like few in the last two decades, allow me to say. A film made of poetry and melancholy, narrated with rare delicacy and sensitivity. Forrest (Tom Hanks at his best performance) begins to tell, to various bench neighbors who take turns, the story of his incredible life. The life of a boy like many others in theory, only "a little bit slower", but because of this, he will encounter the inevitable obstacles of the case: everyone rejects him, everyone mocks him, except Jenny. Jenny, the first and only friend Forrest makes, from that first day on the school bus. "You can sit here if you want", will start a love story that will be the guiding thread of the whole story. Jenny, who also certainly does not have an easy life, with that father who was "so affectionate, always kissing and touching her and her sisters..." Maybe that's why she is the only one who understands Forrest.
Jenny will be Forrest's greatest recurring thought, and also his greatest source of inspiration. Starting when, in front of the usual bullies, Jenny advises Forrest to run, run as much as he can. And from then on, whatever he does, he does it running. He runs, runs, and runs; first to save himself from bullies, then he will run towards becoming a college football star, a national hero in Vietnam (where he will meet the other 2 key figures in his journey: the comrade and what will become his "best good friend" "Bubba" and Lieutenant Dan), a ping pong champion on the army's national team, the owner of a shrimp boat (an activity carried out in Bubba's name, who died in the war, who kept talking about it, and it will make him a billionaire).
He runs through and through an entire American era without realizing it, from Elvis (whom he himself inspires the famous move) to the historical introduction of black "beetles" in the extremely bigoted American public schools, up to Kennedy, hippism and Nixon and his Watergate.
But then Forrest returns home, leaves the boat to Lieutenant Dan to return to his dying mother. After yet another return of Jenny (they will pursue and pursue each other throughout the story), and especially after being abandoned once again by her, Forrest decides to start running "without reason", but this time not only metaphorically. He runs, runs, and runs towards nothing, without destination across America for 3 years 2 months 14 days and 16 hours becoming unknowingly a social phenomenon and a symbol of who knows what.
"I'm a little tired, I think I'll go home now" his final words, and so he ends the run to return home, once again, where he will find, good heavens, his Jenny. "I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is", and indeed now comes the heartbreaking finale. But first Jenny introduces him to her son, Forrest. "Like me!"- "I named him after his father"- "Is his father also named Forrest?".
"You died on a Saturday morning", Forrest's words on Jenny's grave, whom he had finally managed to marry in time after she confessed to him she was dying of an incurable illness. These last scenes are the most moving of all.
In the end, young Forrest finds himself also on the first day of the bus, while a white feather flies again in the sky. It is the closing of the circle and of a wonderful film, an exciting and heart-wrenching story of pure poetry.
"Sometimes (in Vietnam) it stopped raining long enough for the stars to come out, and then it was nice. It was like just before the sun goes down over the swamp; there were more than a million sparkles on the water. Like that mountain lake, it was so clear and, Jenny, it seemed like there were two skies, one above another. And then the desert when the sun comes up, I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the earth began, it was so beautiful. "I would have liked to be there"- You were there"
These are Forrest's words to Jenny shortly before her death. Recalling in a few snapshots all of his experiences, from Vietnam to the great run, where she, even though she wasn't present, was always there.
Because love, true love, exists and can also be the only guiding thread of a life, if you truly believe in it.
"I don't know if we each have a destiny or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think maybe it's both, maybe both happen at the same time".
"My name is Forrest, Forrest Gump"
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