Written by Leila Scott, Photo courtesy of MTV
“What’s normal anyway?” asks Mrs. Gump.
It could be a kid from Greenbow, Alabama without a father, braces on his legs and a twang in his voice. The local idiot with a back shaped like a question mark. Watching people coming and going, as his mom uses their home as an inn for any small-town visitors.
It could be a blonde headed beauty using the corn maze behind her musty trailer as a regular hiding place from her alcoholic father. Even when she finally performs on stage with a folk song and her guitar, greedy men push and holler at her. Then she travels for the rest of her life, settling for temporary homes and comfort.
We don’t always know what version of normal we’re going to get.
Since premiering on the big screen, “Forrest Gump” continues to shake any conventical idea of normal. A plain wooden bench set under sagging moss, stars in the movie as a bridge between the gaps of Gump’s past, present and future. In a tasteful blue and white button down, Gump takes a seat and wraps his arm around the viewer to deliver a friendly form of storytelling, popping in every once and a while to check if we’re still with him. We always are.
His flashbacks take us through grade school bullies, becoming the lead quarterback for a college football team, the Vietnam War, meeting U.S. Presidents and finding his destiny. Gump strips milestones of their significance simply by doing what he’s told. He escapes the bullies, scores the 100-yard touchdown and saves all of his men from oncoming explosives. He even travels across the U.S. twice on a run that lasts 3 years, 2 months, 14 days and 16 hours, “for no particular reason.” Run, Forrest, run. Normal right?
Our seemingly ordinary lives take us through nine to five jobs, highs and lows and sometimes we never go to China to compete on the All-American Ping-Pong Team. My normal led me to the 25th anniversary screening at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival viewing this comedy-drama for the first time. Equally balanced between my tummy bouncing from laughter and squeezing my runny nose from tears, Gump morphs his normal into transcendent moments.
“Don’t ever let anybody tell you they’re better than you, Forrest. If God intended everybody to be the same, he’d have given us all braces on our legs,” Mrs. Gump says. We were all meant to have different versions of normal. When we let our braces break and allow our feet to take us farther than we think we can go, we too may find the miracle in the mundane.
