The "Gone With the Wind" of the Baby-Boomer Generation

Rating: Null/10 (12 February 2011)

This movie has been on TV a lot lately, and just last night the excellent TCM channel showed it---I'm not sure if it was edited, because it was so engrossing and moving I would not have noticed an F-word or any other classless anomaly that sprung from the baby-boomer generation. "Forrest Gump" is a masterpiece, placing Robert Zemekis on the same deserved pedestal as Spielberg, Ford, Fleming or Minnelli.
The emotional similarity between "Gump" and "GWTW" is evident by the end of the movie. In GWTW we watched as the Old South died and passed into legend....in Gump, we watch the beginning of the death of our entire nation as drug-addled baby-boomers and minorities who never knew a day of slavery in their lives began the slow destruction one of the truly greatest nations in the history of the planet. At the end of Gump, the America that some of its citizens today still insist exists, is actually dead...it's long march into chaos marked by a black wall with over 50,000 names engraved on it. Ironic to realize that the greatest of all American generations, the WWII generation mistakenly pursued the path of war in Vietnam. They thought they were doing the right thing.
Tom Hanks and Gary Sinese were luminous in this film, and Robin Wright Penn was haunting as she mirrored almost every hippie girl encountered in the years from 1968 to 1978.....there is horror and humor and impossible coincidences as Zemekis' Everyman GI tries to get along in a post-American world. In the end it is the white feather of love and life that is blown into the blue skies of Alabama as Forrest watches his little boy get on the school bus.
I realize I have now written of this movie, but I really sit and watch it speechless. When Forrest punches out the yippie freak who manhandles his beloved Jenny, and the lush jangle of Jim McGuinn's Rickenbacker 12-string announces the song "Turn, Turn, Turn", tears fill my eyes every time. One of the greatest match-ups of screen and music I've ever seen.
Ecclesiastics, Pete Seeger and The Byrd's were right....to everything there is a season.... and in 1968, the season began to wane for the American Camelot. "Forrest Gump" should be preserved in a time capsule.