The year that Tom Hanks took home his second (and consecutive) Best Actor Oscar, Hollywood had perhaps seen the greatest travesty of a snub offered by the Academy. In truth, any of the nominees winning the Best Picture that year would be considered a snub toward the rest, considering how the 1995 roster included such greats as The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction.
The latter two losing out against Forrest Gump then became a subject of constant debate, enough to set one’s blood boiling at the beautiful productions of the year, each uniquely different than the rest, and yet only one Oscar meant to pluck out the best among the five.
Tom Hanks Addresses Forrest Gump Winning Against QT
If there was ever a tussle to discover the industry’s crème de la crème, it was befitting for the battle to pit Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump against Quentin Tarantino-directed ensemble film, Pulp Fiction. But while Gump stands out as an inextricable beacon of heartbreaking simplicity intermingling with some of the most impactful events in America’s socio-political history, QT delivers a whiplash of crime and gore set against the backdrop of eccentric, expletive-ridden, goose chase of a drama.
In the aftermath of Forrest Gump sweeping the Oscars floor with 6 Academy Award wins, the backlash received by the film and its partisans over the years for being considered superior to the QT crime caper was enough to rile even the ever-complacent Tom Hanks out of his polite silence. The actor, although claiming that Pulp Fiction was “a masterpiece without a doubt,” also pointed out:
“There is a moment of undeniable heartbreaking humanity in ‘Forrest Gump’ when Gary Sinise — he’s playing Lieutenant Dan — and his Asian wife walk up to our house on the day that Forrest and Jenny get married.
[…] I might get weepy thinking about it now. Forrest and Lieutenant Dan in those four words — “magic legs” and “Lieutenant Dan” — understand all they had been through and feel gratitude for every ounce of pain and tragedy that they survived. That’s some intangible sh*t right there.”
While it is difficult to refute Hanks’ theory about the simple aspects tying together the larger theme of the film, it also does not diminish the sting of rebuttal felt due to the sidelining of Frank Darabont’s debut masterpiece or Quentin Tarantino’s slasher-esque drama. The neo-noir black comedy film from QT did however take home an Oscar for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.
Forrest Gump Explores Life in All Its Tragi-comic Beauty
To be an ever-complicated mystery is the one true nature of life and that is the philosophy that solidifies the inexplicable beauty of Forrest Gump. The film, in one simple sentence, unraveled what humanity has struggled to demystify for centuries – that “life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.”
Forrest Gump’s sweeping, monumental run that is a forefather and a precursor to the tragic and underrated life-defining journeys of people like Alexander Supertramp and Cheryl Strayed will forever remain iconic and no amount of gun-toting, expletive-smashing dialogue from Samuel L. Jackson can top the underlying message of the Tom Hanks drama.
Forrest Gump is available for streaming on Paramount Plus.
Source: The New York Times
