It is so difficult being a Forrest Gump

Rating: 9/10 (25 September 2001)

I recently saw `Forrest Gump' and was amazed. I could not understand, whether it is a family drama or a philosophical movie. As I felt that the movie is much more than a family drama, I am not discussing the story of the movie here.
I am trying to analyze the movie from a philosophical/ psychological angle. Is there a message the movie is trying to convey? Does this movie laugh at people who are supposedly very intelligent, rich but never satisfied or happy? Does intelligence above a certain level really makes people feel unhappy about every thing? Is Emotional Quotient (EQ) more important than Intelligent Quotient (IQ)?
Every body knows that focus in so important for success. Yet we are so distracted in life that we are unable to concentrate all our energy in a single thing. Forrest Gump does this so effortlessly. When he runs he runs , when he plays ping pong (Table tennis) he does just that. Is it because of his below average IQ? Or is it because of the very high level of mental maturity he has achieved?
The way Forrest handles all his successes is unbelievable. We see people who become head strong for such trivial things, and Forrest wins again and again without even bothering about the level of success he has achieved. There is a particular scene in which Forrest says to his bench mate in the bust stop ` I went to Washington again, met the president again' the statement sounds so naturally innocent. The actor and the director deserve a special congratulation in this particular scene for making it sound so natural and do not look like a egoistic boast.
The director also captures the way Forrest handles defeat. Forrest never gives up being a Shrimp boat captain and he is never bogged down by a failure. This finally makes him a millionaire.
It is quoted in Bhagavad-Gita that `Treating pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat alike, engage yourself in your duty'. The statement though it may look so simple is extremely difficult to implement in real life. Now researchers have found that Emotional Quotient (EQ) is more important than IQ. Forrest scores so high in EQ, that his IQ becomes irrelevant for all his successes. I really don't know whether the director conveyed this message intentionally.
This movie also has some incredible acting, where you do not realize that Tom Hanks has really acted. I guess he has become Forrest Gump himself. The scene where he shows some sort of emotional outburst is when he discovers about his child. I am sure even a robot will be moved by the scene where he asks his girl friend whether the child is dump or intelligent and asks her permission to talk to his child. He does not ask permission in words, but his facial expression speaks thousand words. Every body else in the film has done excellent support acting.
A brilliant movie and a must see.