Film Critique of “Forrest Gump”
Shawn Delaware
ENG 225
Instructor: David Hayes
July 14, 2013
Film Critique of “Forrest Gump”
Forrest Gump is considered a Romance with some comedy mixed in there. The actual movie was based off of a book written by Winston Groom but the screenplay was written by Eric Roth. Robert Zemeckis directed the film which included award winning actors like Tom hanks, Sally Field, and Robin Wright. The film also was nominated for or won many other awards for best film editing, best sound effects, and best writing. There are numerous aspects of this movie that must be reviewed like acting, sound, editing, and etc. to get a good overview of the film Forrest Gump.
Tom Hanks is the lead actor playing Forrest along with Sally Field and Robin Wright as his supporting actors. Tom Hanks frequently plays ordinary characters in extraordinary situations (Cameron), as he did playing Forrest, a mentally challenged person trying to live a normal life. This movie had quite a bit or realism acting involved. Tom Hank’s and Robin Wright realism really gives the impression of genuine human action and reaction (Goodykootz .Jacobs. 2011). During the whole movie you get that feeling that this can actually happen and is not totally out of this world.
From the beginning shots of the film you get this understanding of what type of movie it is going to be and a good understanding of what type of character Gump is. The opening scene is a shot of a feather floating in the sky. This shot is a close up of the feather, but slowly zooms out to a view of the town. The camera shots used for this feather scene let you focus on the feather and think about what the actual meaning of this feather might be. When they zoom out, they are giving you subtle hints. Don Burgess, cinematographer of Forrest Gump also let you focus solely on Forrest and Jenny when switching from scene to scene. Don Burgess uses so many different shots throughout this movie to give you the...