Forrest Gump- Isaac Richter

"Hello, my name's Forrest, Forrest Gump." These are the first words we hear out of Tom Hanks' mouth in this story about a simple man growing up in the United States of America through the 50's 60's and 70's living the same events that people in this country lived through around that time yet the way he experiences those events is different. He looks at the world without a hint of cynicism or ill will toward anyone. He has faith in mankind, and because he does not understand anything that is complicated, his outlook is simple.
Forrest Gump is a film that spans at least 30 years and each one of these eras has to be presented in a way that is believable with its own sounds and its own music. In this film, music helps set up the time and place in history where Forrest Gump, and all of the people he knows are now situated in. When we hear a guitar and the song “Hounddog” coming from one of the rooms in Forrest's house we know that Elvis Presley is in there and getting the moves from Forrest. We also hear Let's Get Together by The Youngbloods to set up the Summer of Love and several songs by The Doors are used to set up Vietnam as a place of danger and adventure. Alan Silvestri’s original score is also used throughout the film to heighten the emotional qualities of the events in Forrest’s life. The volume of the music is raised in the scene in Washington where Forrest runs to the fountain to hug Jenny, or every time he starts running, especially the first time when the braces on his legs break. The main theme of the film that opens and closes the film follows the movement of a feather flying in the sky and landing on Forrest’s shoe, and then flying away from Forrest’s shoe, back into the air.
Apart from the music and the sound effects, this film provides us with a voiceover that makes us look at these events in a way we never would have thought of before. The film assumes that the audience seeing the film are familiar with the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, the hurricane that sinks most of the boats in the marina (I forgot the name of the hurricane), since they’re all very important events in America, but the way Forrest Gump narrates the story is in a very simple manner. Because of the voiceover, we understand why Forrest does what he does. He falls in love with Jenny because she’s the only child who was ever nice to him, he takes up shrimping because he made a promise to his “best good friend” who died in Vietnam, he called in the Watergate Hotel break-in because the flashlights were hurting his eyes, he approached a black woman because she dropped her book, and he ran across America for over 3 years just because he “felt like running”. Without the voice-over, and without this insight into Forrest Gump, especially without the retrospect that Forrest has now that he knows the significance of the events he participated in, it gives the audience and Forrest himself a new understanding of what he’s going through. Tom Hanks has perfected a childlike pitch and Southern accent that makes his thoughts and reasoning believable.
The scenes in Vietnam have their own distinct sounds from the raindrops to the weapons that are fired and the footsteps heard on the mud whenever the soldiers are running. Other sounds that are created are the sounds of the ping pong ball, which had to be digitally added to make the games believable, and lines had to be added to archival footage to create their interaction with Forrest Gump, such as Elvis, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Lennon.
Forrest Gump is a film that spans 30 years, but all of those years are built around a character, and this character has his own thoughts and feelings about the world around him which is contrasted with the feelings of the rest of the country and the people he meets, including Jenny, the love of his life, Lt. Dan Taylor from the army and even his own mother. People hear about politics and religion, about what causes a war or what creates the wheather, or the social implications of racism. All that Forrest Gump hears is what is right and what is wrong, what makes sense to him and what he believes must be done to keep the harmony amongst the people he loves. He is a simple man in a complicated world, or maybe it’s not that complicated. This film, with its combination of crowd’s cheers, explosion bangs, ping pong balls, rock music, and the voice of this man guiding us through his story and the events that are covered throughout, this is a film where what we hear is crucial to getting the message across.