CROWDS thronged New York’s Times Square to take in the bells. Huge overhead screens on apartment blocks relayed images of the party atmosphere. Everyone was ecstatic. Everyone was having such fun.
In the tightly packed bars and clubs the music was deafening. It was such a hoot!
“Don’t you just love New Year?” asked Carla, one of the party goers. “You can start all over. Everyone gets a second chance,” she said, almost wistfully. In that moment she looked desperately lonely. They played “Auld Lang Syne”. Funny how, even when you are surrounded by people, you can feel so alone.
In the middle of the party mob Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan were certainly lost deep in their own thoughts.
Life hadn’t worked out as either of them had hoped. Strange how they had met up again after their days serving together in Vietnam...
Back in civvy street the two men had formed an unspoken alliance. Forrest had returned the hero from his experiences in the Tet Offensive. Lieutenant Dan felt cheated.
It had been his destiny to die in the battlefield leading his men with honour. “We all have a destiny,” he had said. “Nothing just happens. It’s all part of a plan.”
But now, as he saw it, he was a cripple – an amputee who had lost both limbs in an exchange with the enemy. Although alive he felt cheated. Why had Forrest saved him? It wasn’t part of the plan.
And it’s this central theme about the lives we lead and how fate somehow unfolds – either accidentally or as part of a grand scheme of things – that runs through the 1994 Paramount film Forrest Gump. I think it’s a film that would haunt me... if I let it.
I’M mentioning it because we’ve crossed the threshold into a new year.
Didn’t 2011 go by in just a flash? People say it’s an age thing when you can reflect that time seems to pass by so quickly. 2011 was a blur for me. Normally I like to have at least have some pretence that I’m in control. But when I look back I think 2011 just happened. Rapid style.
So, now that I’m looking ahead, I’d like to think that – if I plan – I can somehow influence what might unfold in 2012. Naive or what, eh?
The film has several poignant and thought-provoking moments.
In one scene when Forrest realises his mother is dying from cancer she tries to reassure him that death is just part of life. “Something we are all destined to do.” It had been her destiny to be his momma, she says.
“I happen to believe you make your own destiny,” she says. “You have to do the best with what God gave you.”
Forrest, like many of us, I suspect, is troubled by the prospect of his own destiny. Something his mother tells him he has to “figure out” for himself.
All Forrest had ever wanted was to be Jenny’s sweetheart. They had grown up together, graduated from high school at the same time but had then gone their separate ways. Forrest had enlisted to ’Nam, whilst Jenny had drifted to California.
But Forrest never forgot Jenny. He carried her with him everywhere, every day. Jenny, on the other hand, had her demons to fight. Her free-and-easy lifestyle of hard drugs and an endless string of relationships never could make up for an abusive childhood. Yet somewhere, lost deep in her heart, she harboured a place just for Forrest.
To cut a long story short their paths do cross again. They seem, finally, to be fulfilling their shared destinies. They marry and live a blissful life back in their home county of Greenbow, Alabama, where they raise their son, Forrest’s namesake.
But there is no happy ending. It seems Jenny’s dissolute past catches up with her and she falls ill with an unspecified though terminal condition (viewers are left to surmise she is one of the first Aids victims).
In one of the most poignant scenes in cinematic history (by my reckoning) a heartbroken Forrest goes to her grave looking for answers. Holding back the tears he reflects that he’s not sure whether his momma was right or Lieutenant Dan.
“I don’t know if we each have a destiny or if we’re just floating around accidental-like on a breeze. But I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.”
It’s had me wondering all these years.
As Forrest’s momma had said: “Life is like a box of chocolates... you never know what you’re gonna get.”
That much is true. But are we just floating around or is there a plan? Maybe it is both.
A belated Happy New Year! I hope you make the best of it. And it makes the best of you.
