The Quentin Tarantino movie Tom Hanks calls a “masterpiece”
Following on from his first Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ with Philadelphia, Tom Hanks refused to rest on his laurels. He delivered yet another rousing performance in Robert Zemeckis’ 1994 comedy-drama Forrest Gump, playing the daft-but-kind lead character and charting the course of 20th-century American history along the way.
Forrest Gump, which also starred the likes of Robin Wright and Gary Sinise, was well-received at the Oscars and won six awards, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’. The film was up against some serious competition, too, most notably Quentin Tarantino’s iconic second feature film, Pulp Fiction.
During an interview with The New York Times, Hanks was asked about Forrest Gump’s rivalry at the Academy Awards with Pulp Fiction and how the two films were played off against one another. The idea at the time was that Zemeckis’ movie embodied a kind of Boomer nostalgia, while Tarantino was perceived as the new kid on the block.
Hanks admitted such notions were “not inaccurate” but noted that he felt that Forrest Gump was able to “overcome” its sentimentality. “The problem with Forrest Gump is it made a billion dollars,” Hanks said. “If we’d just made a successful movie, Bob and I would have been geniuses. But because we made a wildly successful movie, we were diabolical geniuses.”
He continued: “Is it a bad problem to have? No, but there are books of the greatest movies of all time, and Forrest Gump doesn’t appear because, oh, it’s this sappy nostalgia fest. Every year, there’s an article that goes, ‘The Movie That Should Have Won Best Picture’, and it’s always Pulp Fiction.”
Tarantino’s second movie saw him establish himself as one of the most promising young directors in Hollywood at the time, and the now-legendary movie, starring Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, earned the American film icon the acclaim he’d always sought.
“Pulp Fiction is a masterpiece without a doubt,” Hanks went on. “Look, I don’t know, but 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.”
What followed was Hanks justifying Forrest Gump as not being mere sentimental trash but a proper narrative with genuinely heartbreaking moments. While it might not have been as cool as a movie as Pulp Fiction, Hanks feels that Zemeckis’ effort was perceived in the wrong light largely because of its success.
He signed off on the matter, stating: “Then I look at him, and I say, ‘Lieutenant Dan.’ 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 shit right there. That is not just running along to Duane Eddy’s ‘Rebel Rouser’.”
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