The problem with trying to fit a movie into a type-slot

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 2002)

I know many people who have gone to see movies and fail to grasp what is certainly the underlying subtleties the writers, producers and actors are trying to convey. I read the derisive comments on this movie and realize the impossibility of helping these people see what they are blind to. They look at 'Forrest Gump' and think "a movie about a guy who was not too bright and stumbled through life with great luck", they watch 'A Field of Dreams' and think it is a movie about baseball..... <> Some of us just have to be smacked in the head with it I guess. And please, don't think I subscribe to the new-age physco-babble sensitivity training induced brain-damaged politically-corrected point of view. Gump, and movies such as it, are not meant to be pulled apart scene-by-scene. They are works in full and as such can only be truly understood when viewed as that. Works that try to show lifes experiences and the journey that is life are often hard to tolerate, much less understand if we become so hardened and cynical the we see only the entertainment value in them. It is like going to the La Boheme and seeing only a sad story about poor people, or going to see a Ballet and remembering only that you saw some people dancing about. I you get it, nobody need explain it to you, if you do not get it, no amount of explanation will ever make it clear.