The finest example of the film’s spinelessness occurs when Forrest accidentally—of course! accidentally! everything is an accident after all—ends up on the National Mall in the middle of an antiwar march and Abbie Hoffman hurries him up to the microphone and says “tell us a little about the war, man” and Forrest says “the war?” and Hoffman clarifies “the war in Viet-fucking-nam” and then Forrest says “well,” and it’s seems like—at last, finally—this film is actually going to say something about the history it purports to tell, and then Forrest leans into the microphone to talk but right then someone pulls the cable and Forrest is left addressing the subject of his generation’s greatest open wound to an audience that can’t even hear him. And when his mic is finally restored he’d already finished. “And that’s all I have to say about that.” That’s all Forrest Gump was willing to say about the conflict that defined its generation: nothing.
This is really, really good.
