Forrest Gump 5

I JUST DONT UNDERSTAND how people just don't understand this movie. Don't schools teach poetry anymore? Forest Gump in not just a character in the movie that takes place in America. He IS the United States of America, and everything that happens to him, from start to finish, IS the history of the United States--in metaphor! From start to finish, the film is a more-or-less straight-down-the-line history lesson, taking viewers through all of America's bumbling, if at times horrid, but always well-meant and often heroic beauty. In war and peace, through thick and thin, from before Independence through the Revolutionary War and all our other wars, it takes in the Industrial Revolution, Manifest Destiny and mostly every other national milestone and definitive concept, on into the present day (of 1994). Jenny is (ever-illusive) "Peace"--won, in the end, if for an only too brief period--only to be lost again, and Gary Sinese's character is, in a word, a painfully disabled (and white-suited) "God", always looking out for the bumbling but good-natuerd half-wit. Then there's the score. Owing to its having so beautifully mirrored that same history, the film score has to be high on the list of the best ever composed. I listen to it regularly, more and more, these days--usually directly after the latest news on Iraq! So. See the film--and listen to it--again! Of course, if you don't know your history, you won't deduce any of this, or hear it. A pity. Somebody: read a book for God's sake! Magnificently done. Inspirational. Phrix