Waking Up From History: The Big Chill and Forrest Gump
*SPOILER ALERT*
*QUESTIONABLE ANALYSIS ALERT*
*CONTAINS INFORMATION BASED ON WIKIPEDIA*
Plot summary, The Big Chill (1983):
Seven alumni from the University of Michigan in their thirties, known for their political activism in the 60s, converge on the South Carolina vacation home of Harold and Sarah Cooper to attend the funeral of fellow classmate Alex, who committed suicide while living with the Coopers. After the burial, everyone stays for the weekend. Harold and Sarah are living a respectable middle-class life, with Harold about to sell his small business to a large corporation. Sam is a popular TV star on a “Magnum P.I. type detective show. Meg is a single real estate attorney in Atlanta, listening to her biological clock ticking. Karen, a housewife from suburban Detroit, is unhappy in her marriage to her advertising executive husband, Richard. Michael is a writer doing fluff pieces for People Magazine. Nick is the pariah of the bunch, a down-on-his-luck Vietnam vet and former radio host.
The story presents a few general themes: a distrust of success, the disillusionment of adulthood, commitment vs. betrayal. The departed Alex’s young girlfriend Chloe represents a lost innocence they all yearn for. The group confesses to prior transgressions, acts on suppressed lusts, bonds over weed and Golden Oldies. In the end, there’s an acceptance of the loss of Alex, a resolution of Meg’s search for a sperm donor, a home for the rootless Nick, and a realization that life is a bitch, but your friends can see you through.
Plot summary, Forrest Gump (1994):
Forrest Gump, a man of marginal intelligence but with a simple, virtuous insight and certain extraordinary skills, grows up in rural Alabama and, via coincidence, experiences the tumultuous events of the Sixties and Seventies in America and meets several famous people including Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Abbie Hoffman, John Lennon, and Richard Nixon. He holds a truehearted loyalty to his childhood friend Jenny Curran, best friend Bubba from his platoon in Vietnam, and his Army commander, Lieutenant Dan Taylor.
Forrest moves through his life as a non-judgmental observer, viewing the horror of war, the strife of the civil rights movement, and the betrayal of Watergate through the eyes of a child, never giving in to despair nor wrestling with complex questions, always resilient, always hopeful. His curious talent for being in the right place in the right time brings him fame and fortune, which he uses to help his friends. In the end, Forrest has lived a fantastic, rewarding life, living proof that empathy and kindness are what matter.
My comments:
Both movies address the Baby Boomer generation that lived through a restless, upsetting time. They offer catharsis, a way of coming to terms with the strife of history, yet in an audience-friendly way that doesn’t choose sides or make moral judgments. That is why these films never rise above the level of popular entertainment.
In The Big Chill, exactly what this group of friends did during their wooly activist years and what it meant to them personally is never made clear. The symbols of “The Establishment” they once rebelled against, whatever they once were, have now turned light and superficial: A policeman offers to drop a possible stop light ticket against Nick if Sam would just do that famous jump into his sports car like the intro of his TV show, Michael is disgusted that he makes crazy money by writing fodder for People “that you can read during an average crap”. Neither Sam nor Michael are sufficiently motivated to do anything more significant. The activism of their college years has evolved into a distaste for business success, commercialization, and celebrity worship. They can only manage a faux outrage over the trivialization of their 30-something lives, which suggests that their counterculture stance during college was probably just another fashion, a hollow stance. Aside from the 60s protest subtheme, there are real human problems raised here—the meaning of the doomed Alex’s life, reevaluating your purpose as you face middle age, the value of friendship – but like a true 80s feel-good movie, such heavy considerations are secondary when the friends are bumping butts while drying dishes to The Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”.
It’s curious, and telling, that nobody of this group remained a political or social activist, as if that was something to be outgrown in lieu of a more traditional career or having kids, like these things are mutually exclusive. Even Nick, the heir apparent to the faithful firebrand Alex, in the end takes up with the nubile Chloe, on a noble mission to shack up with her and renovate the old abandoned house on the Coopers’ property. Spontaneous sexual liaisons or sneaking a joint in the bathroom is about as rebellious as this gang gets anymore.
Forrest Gump furthers this distance between a generation and its legacy, presenting the great upheaval of the Sixties and the emerging “Me Generation” culture in the Seventies through the eyes of a naïf. The conclusive feelings at the story’s end is more exhaustion and surrender than of the growth or enlightenment that come with the wisdom of experience. Forrest’s presence at Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, the March on the Pentagon, or Lennon’s appearance on The Dick Cavett Show (I was half-expecting a helicopter to come swooping in to drop Forrest into the middle of the Woodstock Festival), besides being a showcase for the emerging digital editing technology in film post-processing, serve primarily as emotional pop-ups—intended to elicit recognition and a nostalgic response, until the movie moves on, doing nothing about the emotions raised, nor giving Forrest any kind of meaningful reaction to them. In this sweep of cinematic shorthand, there’s little room for character development. Forrest is unerringly the angel of forgiveness and grace, Lt. Dan and Jenny are one-dimensional stereotypes (I feel particularly sorry for Jenny who’s burdened with personifying every selfish excess of the 60s and 70s) to be saved via Forrest’s saintly redemption.
There’s definitely things to like about this movie, though—the comedy of Forrest inadvertently starting the “smiley face” trend, Forrest accidentally exposing the Watergate break-in and starting the running craze of the 70s; the earnest performances of Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, and Gary Sinise; the uplifting qualities of forgiveness and compassion that make Forrest such a lovable character. But I expected perhaps something more important to say about those times and was left wanting. Forrest Gump won the 1994 Academy Award for Best Picture over The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction, an injustice I won’t even begin to describe.