I realize this marks me as a philistine,* but I'm a total sucker for Forrest Gump. I know, I know. It's schmaltzy and heavy-handed, and it does that annoying thing where a simpleton floats through history and we see it all fresh through his innocent virginal eyes (see also: Being There and Benjamin Button and a bunch of other flicks). And yes, it was a travesty that Pulp Fiction lost to Forrest Gump at the Oscars. That was dumb.
But still. It gets me every time. That scene where Forrest is talking to Jenny's gravesite about their son?
Speaking of Jenny: She's horrible. I mean, she's just a horrible person. She makes bad choices and treats the only person who loves her like dirt and is generally dreadful. Marc Bernardin nails that over at Playboy (link is SFW):
But then there’s Jenny Curran (played by the luminous Robin Wright), Forrest’s one true love and beacon of all that is good and right in the world. We see Jenny through Forrest’s eyes, which is why the movie makes us feel like she’s an angel straight from heaven. But if you actually look at what she does, she’s revealed as a horrible, manipulative, selfish woman whose every action towards Forrest serves to either lead him astray or further her own goals.
The four reasons he offers to prove his case are spot on and you should read them if you want to get all riled up. But it shouldn't be surprising that Jenny is terrible. She's the literal embodiment of American societal breakdown. She's the most heavy-handed metaphor in the history of cinema, a vehicle into which director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Eric Roth can pour the sins of the sixties and seventies: sex, drugs, and rock and roll, sure, but also the decline of the family and increased crime and racial unrest** and anti-American sentiment at home and abroad and AIDS. If you turned David Frum's How We Got Here into a walking, talking person, it'd look kind of like Jenny.
So of course Jenny is terrible. She represents a terrible time.
*Preempting all the clowns on Twitter: "No, your opinion on Sucker Punch marks you as one!" Screw you guys: under-appreciated masterpiece.
**I assume someone has written an essay about how Forrest Gump's greatest sin is its reduction of the civil rights movement to him stumbling in front of one historic moment on a college campus and her causing a tussle at a Black Panther rally? Get on that, Salon!