(Credit: Paramount Pictures)

Since being old enough to watch Forrest Gump, it has always been a special film for me. It is the sort of piece of pop culture that seems to hunt you down and find you at the right time. It’s that bookmark in your life that you revisit for some kind of artistic hug. When life throws up a distasteful chocolate it mystically appears out of nowhere and assures you that brighter times are ahead.

Or at least that is how I have always seen it without much of a second thought. Thus, you can imagine my surprise when the discourse surrounding the film in recent times seems to have taken a revisionist turn towards the negative. And you can imagine my further surprise when much of the criticism made a hell of a lot of sense.

I myself have written in the past about the hegemonic cultural blindfolding of how American art portrays the Vietnam War as a one-way street, stating: “If you wade through the annals that have been written about the Vietnam War, you will likely find more mentions of The Doors, Stanley Kubrick and LSD than you will of Agent Orange, the My Lai massacre or the William Calley trial.”

Adding: “This is not merely an issue of geographical location or even propaganda for that matter, but a welter of influences that pertained, largely, to the war coinciding with the rise of pop culture. And pop culture, in all of its guise, is a medium that requires an angle.” The American angle in art has all too often been a patriotic one. Forrest Gump is one of the worst examples of that. And yet somehow this sort of slipped by me, even later in life.

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That may well be because it is so clearly fiction, and viewed through a skewed glare that you think of things through the harmless protagonist’s eyes rather than seeing the wider picture. Does that excuse it, or does it make it even more insidious in some sort of manufactured subliminally airbrushed way? Despite the headline of the piece suggesting otherwise, that is something that I still grapple with.

Nevertheless, I still feel that should a hardship befall me, god forbid, the hug of Forrest Gump will still be a cheery one, unmarred by the mire of nettlesome issues rightfully levelled against it. That is the crux of art in some ways, one folk’s orange crème delight is another’s filling-pulling half-melted toffee debacle. If culture requires an angle then so does our view of it and Forrest Gump lives and dies on the approach you bring towards it.

Our very own Calum Russell wrote: “Gliding through each national milestone and emerging unscathed both physically and mentally, Zemeckis’ film trivialises American history, painting political activism and hippy culture as colourful caricatures too wildly big for Forrest to grasp the meaning of. As a result, the reality that the film presents is a worrying one where Forrest’s apathetic neutrality is shown to be the height of virtuous morality.”

It’s a fair point. However, I recall the comfort that it brought me in a less cognisant time. Thus, my interpretation of Gump’s meander through history is less troublesome. I have always picked up on the storytelling style more so than the historical context and the one thing that has always shone through clear as day for me on that front is how truly horrible and endlessly besieged Gump’s life is for the most part.

He might not complain about it much himself, thusly, much of the misery he is beset by is missed through the glossy eyes of his charm, but he is never really much of a winner aside from a few wry jokes about lucky investments. In short, Gump’s way of life is not portrayed as a winning one in the typical sense. So, from that standpoint, you could almost view the film as a commentary on how the disadvantaged American has little control over the diegesis of their life and is asked to endure hardships with a brave face.

And that is exactly what Gump does. Once more, this could be bemoaned as a display that being ignorant of what is really going on and marching through life is no virtue, but because I come from a position of liking the film and being continually beguiled by its charm and story, I once more see that differently. I think Gump’s message is not one of blind patriotism, but one of finding peace beyond circumstance and looking to live by your own moral code – provided it is a harmless one – in order to find contentment.

I grew up with the film and I could ramble on about a few beautiful personal moments that it has presented me with if such a discourse was fit for this piece, but the point is that it has always been a nugget of soulful exultation for me. It might not be ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ but is the singalong ‘American Pie’, and thus, for all of its faults, I like to think that its heart is in the right place.

And the reason I can say that and not feel duped by misguided sentiment from when I was too young to know better, is because I think many fans of the film will also be fans of damning American reportage like Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War documentary. In part, the American odyssey of Forrest Gump might have even inspired a curiosity in many viewers on this front.

And as for the film itself, it is a fantastic feat of simple story. It captures the same embalming atmosphere of charmed life that Bradley Cooper touched upon when discussing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “There’s something about travelling down the river—the flow—and how he made me see and smell the environment. It really transported me to a different time.”

And as Bob Odenkirk said about that very same work of fiction, “Sorry about the N-word, but it must be taken in the context of the time it was written. Plus it’s clear to me that Twain was making a strong (and sly) statement about the humanity of those who were then labelled the N-word.” It might be obfuscated and lost at times, but I think there is enough of the same wry smile about the patriotism in Forrest Gump to deliver something similar.

It is a fictional discourse of American history clearly swayed by an unreliable narrator. And while it might fail at making that patently obvious from time to time, it triumphs with the characterful pursuit of happiness despite the odds that it charts.