The horror movie genre looks a lot different today than it did a quarter century ago.  While some things haven’t changed, like Hollywood chasing success in the genre with an endless number of sequels, the style of horror movies is much different, and that is due to a shift to a more auteur driven flow within the genre.  One thing that has made horror movies so appealing to the movie studios in Hollywood is that they are a low risk, high reward product for them to invest in.  Horror movies tend to be cheap to make and are able to perform well at the box office, meaning that it’s a genre with a track record of profitability.  Unfortunately, during the 80’s and 90’s, the cheapness of horror movies became much more of a defining feature of the genre.  The movies of that era could never be considered high art, and were for the most part just manufactured to put butts into seats, typically from less discerning teenage and college age audiences that just wanted cheap thrills.  But even those demographics were growing tiresome of the same old tricks that the Hollywood was giving us in the horror genre.  Particularly towards the end of the 90’s, horror had just been reduced to schlock, with emphasis on cheap jump scares and gross out gore as a means of entertaining their audiences.  There were bright spots to be sure, like Wes Craven’s iconic Scream (1996), but even that got drowned out by a dozen Scream clones that followed in it’s wake.  Horror was in desperate need of a re-evaluation, which for a lot of people was a desire to take the control of the genre out of Hollywood executive offices and back into the hands of filmmakers who had a real hunger for changing the rules of the genre.  Horror films has been a great breeding ground in the past for visionary directors, such as George A. Romero, John Carpenter, and Brian DePalma.  Even Steven Spielberg technically sprung out of thriller filmmaking with movies like Duel (1971) and Jaws (1975).  But what kind of filmmaker would arise in the turn of the millennium to cause a dramatic shift in the horror movie genre.

I think very few people saw the rise of one M. Night Shyamalan coming.  Born in India before his family moved to the States when he was still a baby, Shymalan grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, developing a desire for filmmaking at an early age.  Him and his childhood friends would get together and make short films, so by the time he started attending the Tisch School of the Arts’ elite film program, he already had a good knowledge of visual storytelling.  From these early exercises in filmmaking, he demonstrated a fondness for dark thrillers and tense horror.  He looked to influences like Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling in shaping the the way he told stories with a darker edge.  But upon graduating from film school, he didn’t immediately jump into the horror genre right away.  His first feature film was a semi-autobiographical drama called Praying with Anger (1992), and his follow-up after that was a feel good coming of age story called Wide Awake (1998).  At the same time, he was also drafted to write a screenplay for the live action adaptation of Stuart Little (1999).  None of these early film would have led you to know where he was about to go next as a filmmaker.  While he probably appreciated the work he was getting, it’s also apparent that he really wanted to make the kind of movie that he would want to watch, and that’s what drove him to create his first horror movie.  He sent his spec script for his take on a “ghost” story to multiple studios, and found a surprising interested party in David Vogel, the then head of production at Disney.  Vogel belived in Shymalan’s script so much that he agreed to the $3 million dollars for the rights, and the stipulation for Shymalan to direct, without the corporate approval of the Disney higher ups.  It was gamble, but as we all would see, it was a gamble that payed out in a major way.

The Sixth Sense went into production in the Fall of 1998, shooting entirely in M. Night’s home base of Philadelphia.  Unfortunately, David Vogel’s stunt in getting the rights cost him his position at Disney, as he was dismissed shortly after.  Disney would allow the production to move forward, but the budget would be heavily trimmed down.  In many ways, this would’ve destroyed the visions of most filmmakers wanting to shape their movie the way they wanted, but M. Night was able to make lemonade out of those lemons.  No stranger to working with non-existent budgets in his home movie days, Shymalan found ways to create an effective horror movie with the constraints that were thrust upon him.  He relied on old school techniques from the early days of horror, like the use of atmosphere and tricks with lighting to evoke a sense of terror in his scenes.  The film has no post-production visual effects added, and only a few instances where his ghost actors appear in make-up.  As we would see, that is all that was needed in the end.  One of the most effective tricks shown in the movie is another old school slight of hand where actress Toni Colette exits her kitchen and goes into the other room with the camera following her and once she re-enters the kitchen, all of the cabinet doors are open.  Of course, those in the know with regards to filmmaking obviously can put together that once the kitchen is out of view of the camera, a bunch of production assistants swarm in and open all of those cabinet doors before the room is in the camera’s view again.  It’s simple, but effective if you do it right and Shymalan makes it work in his movie.  With The Sixth Sense, Shymalan is not creating just another schlocky horror film; nor was he making something that hadn’t been done before in horror filmmaking either.  He was simply using the art of cinema to tell a horror story really effectively and make old tricks feel new again.  In a time when horror was loud and ugly, Shymalan made something that managed to thrill effectively through it’s minimalism.

It certainly helped that he had a cast who effectively contributed to this more muted style of horror filmmaking.  At the time, the movie actually benefitted from the collapse of another movie.  Bruce Willis was contracted by Disney to complete 3 films, the first of which was the blockbuster Armageddon (1998).  Unfortunately, the second film on that contract, Broadway Brawler, imploded after Willis demanded the firing of the director.  That film never got back on track and the studio needed to find another project quick to allow Willis to fulfill the obligations of his contract.  This is where the arrival of The Sixth Sense proved to be fortuitous, because it was movie that was a departure from the usual films that Bruce Willis had been a part of which were typically action oriented, and would allow him to show more range as an actor.  The part of Dr. Malcolm Crowe gave Willis a chance to be subtle, and even charming at times; a welcome departure from the gruffness of his past roles.  But, while it was beneficial for M. Night Shymalan to have a big name movie star in his film, it mattered a lot more to get the casting right for the crucial character of Cole Sear; the little boy who can “see dead people.”  The crux of the movie is dependent on the ability for the audience to believe that this young boy can see the dead, and that’s a difficult thing for a young actor to nail on screen.  Luckily for Shymalan, he found his Cole in a young up-and-coming star named Haley Joel Osment.  Osment, who had previously played the small part of Forrest Gump’s son opposite Tom Hanks a couple years back, showed acting talent beyond his years in the harrowing performance that he gives as Cole Sear.  It also mattered a great deal that his chemistry on screen with Bruce Willis was believable.  The interactions between Willis and Osment are definitely among the highlights of the movie, with Willis showing a vulnerability on screen that we typically had not see him show.  The film also features an incredible performance from Toni Collette as Cole’s mom Lynn.  Her performance is a heartbreaking one in which she tries everything she can to help her son who is “different.”  And there is a remarkable cameo role from former boy band singer Donnie Wahlberg (brother of Mark) as a disgruntled former patient of Malcolm Crowe, a role that Wahlberg apparently lost nearly 50 pounds for in order to give himself a gaunt look.  It was a blessing of all the right actors coming together for the roles that would indeed propel them to greater things later on.

Of course, the biggest key to the success of M. Night Shymalan’s The Sixth Sense was The Twist Ending.  This was probably the thing that made David Vogel jump so many hurdles in order to secure the rights.  Fair warning, I am about to spoil the twist ending of the film in this paragraph, so if you haven’t seen the movie by now skip ahead.  In the closing moments of the film, it is revealed that Dr. Malcolm Crowe has been dead for the majority of the movie and that he has been appearing as a ghost the whole time.  The only reason audiences didn’t originally pick up on that is because we see him interacting with Cole Sear, a boy who can see and interact with ghosts.  It’s only in retrospect that we realize that Cole is the only character that we’ve seen Malcolm speak directly too.  In the reveal that comes in the end, where Malcolm realizes he is a ghost, that all the puzzle pieces that Shymalan had been laying out start to make sense.  The effectiveness of the twist lies in the fact Shymalan doesn’t just pull it out of thin air; all of the clues were in plain sight, but with the way the story was being told, as it focuses on Cole’s journey, those clues are not at the forefront of our minds until the twist makes us see the story again in a completely different light.  It’s something that Shymalan learned from one of his inspirations, the master of twist endings Rod Serling, who utilized them brilliantly in many episodes of The Twilight Zone.  What was also crucial was that, like many of Serling’s most memorable twist endings, there had to be catharsis with it; that the audience would feel rewarded if it picked up on all the clues, but also not feel dejected if they hadn’t.  It took careful planning for Shymalan to not give away the fact that one of his main characters was dead the whole time, but he had to make sure that the clues would be recognizable by the end.  For this, he borrowed another trick from another one of his inspirations; Hitchcock.  Alfred Hitchcock famously used color coding as a way of signaling the presence of danger, something that he most famously used in Vertigo (1958).  In The Sixth Sense, Shymalan uses the color red to signify when a ghost was present in the scene.  Sometimes this was shown overtly, like when Cole is visited by a ghost girl, played by a young Mischa Barton.  She appears after Cole hides in his bedroom play tent, which of course is a bright color of red.  This helps tie the color to the appearance of ghosts, but when we learn the truth about Malcolm at the end, we sudden notice all those subtle hints of red that were present throughout the movie whenever he meets with Cole.  All of these ingredients helped to give the movie the effective twist ending that it needed and boy did it pay off in a big way.

Part of why The Sixth Sense made the impact that it did was also due to the fact that it came out in the middle of a turning point for the horror genre.  Earlier that same summer in 1999, The Blair Witch Project (1999) premiered and completely turned Hollywood on it’s head.  This found footage horror movie made on a shoe-string budget with a simple digital camera and no-name actors remarkably opened at number one at the box office and grossed an astounding $140 million.  While the gimmick itself was probably what lured a lot of people to the movie theaters to check out this oddity for themselves, it also revealed a craving from audiences for something different in the increasingly stale horror genre.  The Blair Witch Project filled that void perfectly with it’s unconventional way of telling it’s story.  But surprisingly, The Sixth Sense would also benefit from this change in audiences’ taste as well.  While The Sixth Sense was more mainstream than the experimental Blair Witch, it also stood out as being very different from the other horror films of that era.  It wasn’t a slasher thriller; it wasn’t a jump scare fest; and it wasn’t a blood soaked gore fest.  It was an atmospheric ghost story with some mystery elements thrown in.  And for audiences, that was enough.  In many ways, M. Night Shymalan was harkening back to the auteur driven horror movies of the 1970’s, many of which were slower burns than the in your face aggressiveness of the 80’s and 90’s.  Movies like William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) or Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976) take their time in building their scares to a crescendo, and Shymalan makes his film even more low key than those.  It’s not about how many times you can scare an audience, but by how well you can scare them.  Shymalan brought atmosphere back into the forefront of horror filmmaking, and the effect it had was very evident on the horror movies that have come in it’s wake.

One of the strongest legacies that The Sixth Sense has left behind is the way that it brought horror back into the hands of the filmmakers.  The genre has been much more driven by style and the unique visions of it’s filmmakers.  In the wake of The Sixth Sense,  Hollywood was interested in finding out who would be the next M. Night Shymalan; a question that even Shymalan has struggled to define for himself.  There certainly has been a resurgence in the number of film directors that have emerged as uniquely tied to the genre of horror films.  James Wan is one of those filmmakers that managed to emerge from the horror genre with a clearly defined trademark to his name.  He helped to shepherd the Saw and Conjuring franchises into some of the most lucrative horror series in recent years, and he continues to develop new horror concepts that appeal to modern audiences.  The interesting thing is, his horror movie are wildly varied, from the gory Saw films to the subtler scares of The Conjuring.  Likewise, other horror filmmakers like Ari Aster are re-defining the things that we find scary on the big screen, like how he terrified us with a Scandinavian paganism in Midsommar (2019).  And there are other recent horror filmmakers like Mike Flanagan, Leigh Whannell and Parker Finn who are generating effective scares through the mainstream machine of Hollywood with old standards like Stephen King, Universal Monsters, and just even the simple act of a sinister smile.  Horror has gone through a complete transformation in the last quarter century thanks to what The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project left behind.  It’s honestly now the genre where we see the most creativity allowed for filmmakers, because it’s one of the few avenues where experimentation is rewarded.  In many ways, this is a golden era for the genre, and it’s something that Shymalan thankfully pushed Hollywood into accepting.

When it first released in the waning Summer days of August 1999, The Sixth Sense opened to a respectable but not extraordinary $26 million.  But remarkably, it continued to gross the same amount weekend after weekend, $20 million for 6 weeks straight; a feat only Titanic (1997) had a achieved before.  This was a true phenomenon that Hollywood couldn’t quite figure out at first.  What we witnessed with Sixth Sense’s unprecedented run was one of the first truly viral movies, where word of mouth played a major role in driving up it’s box office.  While people raved about the craft of the film, it was that perfectly executed twist ending that really brought audiences back again and again.  Shymalan created an experience with The Sixth Sense, and not just a product like so many horror movies of the last decade were.  In the end, The Sixth Sense grossed an astonishing $293 million at the box office, making it the highest grossing horror film ever at that time, a title it would hold for 18 years before 2017’s IT surpassed it’s record.  The film would also go on to earn 6 Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture and for Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette in their supporting roles.  Bruce Willis would also walk away from with $100 million through his back end profits deal when he accepted the role for initially less than his average salary.  Since then, Shymalan has struggled in the shadow of his greatest achievement.  He’s had success here and there, including with Signs (2002) and Split (2016), but he’s been a filmmaker who’s unfortunately been boxed in by his own style of filmmaking, which hasn’t gotten better over time.  Thankfully, Haley Joel Osment has been able to survive the usual pitfalls that can ruin child actors and he’s aged into adulthood fairly well as a beloved character actor, including returns to the horror genre with movies like the recent Blink Twice (2024), co-starring Channing Tatum.  Toni Collette likewise has excelled in her returns to horror, including her acclaimed performance in Hereditary (2018).  While M. Night Shymalan may have become a victim of his own success and struggled as a filmmaker in the years after, there’s still no denying that he crafted a masterful film with The Sixth Sense.  In all of it’s subtleties, it re-freshened a genre that was in desperate need of a transformation, and the great thing is that he managed to make it happen with tricks of the trade that used to be staples of the horror genre that had sadly been forgotten over time.  With hints of Hitchcock and the Twilight Zone present in his movie, he managed to show us what a horror movie used to be and could once again become again, and this helped to usher in a new era of experimentation in horror filmmaking that we are still seeing today.  We have The Sixth Sense to thank for the slow burn intensity of artsy horror like we see in films such as Skinamarink (2022) and Longlegs (2024); movies that don’t force scares on you but still fill you with a sense of terror while you watch it.  It’s unbelievable that a little movie about a child who “sees dead people” would be the kind of movie to change Hollywood horror for many years after.

The movie Forrest Gump (1994) by many accounts would seem to be an unusual choice to be the highest grossing movie of the year as well as the champion of awards season.  A story about a simpleton who has managed to stumble his way into important historical moments while being completely oblivious to his own impact on those same events, as well as the effect he has on the lives of others.  On the surface it doesn’t scream out as being a blockbuster.  And yet, it accomplished all that and more.  Forrest Gump was the undisputed champion of it’s release year both at the box office, and at the Academy Awards, and it’s even more surprising when you see the competition it went up against.  It managed to become the highest grossing film of the year, even with direct competition against Disney’s juggernaut The Lion King (1994) that same Summer.  And during awards season, it managed to beat out universally beloved classics like Pulp Fiction (1994) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994).  So what was it about the movie that made it such a champion with critics and audiences.  When you look at the film, it makes a lot of sense given the context of when it came out and also with the talent that was involved.  Forrest Gump was the right movie at the right time for Hollywood.  America was going through a period of relative peacetime during the Clinton era of the 1990’s, and during this time the culture was beginning to reflect on the struggles of the past and look at how they shaped the country into what it was at the time.  With Forrest Gump, the focus was on the shaky period of American post-War history between the 1950’s and 1970’s that saw the rise of Civil Rights in the South, the horrors of the Vietnam War and the loss of faith in government through the Watergate scandal.  All of these events provide the backdrop of Forrest Gump, but at it’s center is an eccentric character brought to life through an unforgettable performance by an actor who was starting to hit the peak of his powers in Hollywood; Tom Hanks.  All of this collided in a movie that benefited from the right timing, and 30 years on, it’s interesting to look back and see if the movie has the same kind of potency today.

The movie was based on a 1986 novel of the same name by author Winston Groom.  Told as a first person account from a Southern man named Forrest Gump, we witness his life story while at the same time getting a perspective on the national events he witnessed from his own simple and unburdened mind.  The novel was meant to be a picturesque story of America in transition with a bit of humor injected to give a satirical perspective on what it meant to be an American during these tumultuous years.  The story lent itself very well to a cinematic adaptation, and went through a fierce bidding war before eventually landing at Paramount Pictures.  Screenwriter Eric Roth was given the task of refining Groom’s sprawling narrative into a manageable script, and even though it did adhere pretty closely to the original plot of the novel, Roth did make quite a few changes, especially with the character of Forrest himself.  In the novel, Forrest is more of an overt savant, with clearly defined disabilities that made him academically deficient in many things, but also highly proficient in others.  In Roth’s script, Forrest it’s a bit more ambiguous of a character.  We never know what’s going on with him as a person, and why he’s not as bright as the average person.  It wasn’t that long after the film Rain Man (1988) had featured a savant character with severe autism in it’s story, so perhaps the studio just didn’t want that to be the focus of their movie.  In a sense, Forrest is written much more like a Capra-esque “every-man,” but with just a little less mental acuity.  It does fit more with that the intent of the story should be, which to not focus on Forrest’s disabilities but rather the journey he takes through life.  It’s a style of story that dates back to Voltaire’s Candide, and has been the basis for other films of the same ilk like Woody Allen’s Zelig (1983) or Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man (1973), where a common man finds himself wandering though life and finding himself unexpectedly being caught up in the march of history.  The fact that Forrest is not the brightest apple in the bunch is inconsequential to the plot, though it does occasionally lead to some of the funniest moments.  What is of consequence is where his journey in life leads him, and what effect he has on others.

What was also crucial in the making of Forrest Gump was who would end up directing it.  Filmmakers like Ivan Reitman, Penny Marshall, and Terry Gilliam had circled around the project, but the job ultimately went to Robert Zemekis.  Zemekis was an interesting choice for this material, because he was not exactly known as a prestige film director.  He made blockbuster films that were cutting edge in technology, and also enormous crowd-pleasers.  His type of movie were comical adventures like Romancing the Stone (1983), Back to the Future (1985) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988).  A period film was not exactly what he was known for, but Zemekis did see the potential of this story through his own unique style.  Given his background in comedic movies, he saw the underlying humor of Forrest’s story to be something that he could easily work with.  He also saw a way to use the story as a means to try out some new visual effects techniques that had yet to be used on screen.  The visual effects used in the movie wouldn’t be the big kind that you would see in blockbusters like Jurassic Park (1993).  Instead, they were the invisible kind that made you forget you were looking at something that was digital touched up in a computer.  In particular, what stuck out to audiences were the scene where Tom Hanks is digitally inserted into real archival footage of famous historical events, which includes meetings with long gone past presidents like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.  It’s a subtle effect, but audiences were still struck by the seamlessness of the result.  There were other really effective visual effects that again don’t draw attention to themselves, but in retrospect reveal themselves to be very impressively executed.  Some people, for instance, thought actor Gary Sinise was a real amputee but it turns out his legs were removed through the magic of CGI in the film.  While Zemekis was indeed using his skills as a cutting edge blockbuster director to good use in this movie, Forrest Gump also marked a departure for him from the more zanier movies in his past and got him more comfortable with delivering a more mature, dramatic story, though still with some humor throughout.  Hollywood certainly rewarded him with that maturity, as he won the Oscar for directing.

But, when you think about the movie Forrest Gump, the first person who comes to mind will always be the man who brought the character to life, Tom Hanks.  Hanks had something of a challenge with the character.  Play the part the wrong way, and the character of Forrest could have unfortunately fallen into cringe territory.  The movie Tropic Thunder (2008) touched upon this aspect, where Robert Downey Jr.’s character warns about the perils of going “full r-word” in their bids to win awards for playing in mentally challenged roles.  Forrest Gump was used as an example in the movie of an actor who managed to walk that fine line the right way and of course Tom Hanks got his Oscar for it.  Despite how Tropic Thunder pokes fun at it, Tom Hanks manages to find the right tone with the character of Forrest.  He’s dumb, but not without some thoughtfulness, especially when it comes to expressing his emotions.  This is certainly in line with the more Frank Capra “every-man” angle that Eric Roth tried to make Forrest into.  We can laugh at some of his goofy simplicity, but the movie never mocks him for being who he is.  Forrest makes his way through the film as a pure soul who just is oblivious to the prejudices that infect the rest of us.  Tom Hanks managed to make Forrest more than just a one note character, finding his humanity through all of the relatable aspects of the character; his charm, kindness and enthusiasm for life.  Hanks managed to find the unique sound of Forrest’s deep Southern accent by observing the young actor who would be playing Forrest as a boy.  Young Michael Connor Humphreys (no relation) had this unique way of speaking in his Alabama bred accent that Tom Hanks just loved, and he used it for his own performance.  But Hanks’ performance alone wasn’t the thing that helped to make the movie memorable.  He was given great support by Robin Wright as the tragic love of Forrest’s life, Jenny, as well as the memorable turns of Gary Sinise and Mykelti Williamson as Lieutenant Dan and Bubba respectively; all characters whose lives unexpectedly intersect with that of Forrest and are forever shaped by it.  Tom Hanks himself was coming off of an Oscar win for the film Philadelphia (1993), so his stock was already on the rise.  Thanks to Forrest Gump, he would be only the second actor after Spencer Tracy to win back to back Oscars for Best Actor.

While it’s undeniable that the movie was a massive success in it’s day, looking back on the film from today’s perspective certainly offers up some interesting questions; namely what is the movie trying to say.  One complaint leveled at the film is that it’s a bit shallow, at least when it comes to the perspective it gives about the historical events that it depicts.  The movie approaches everything from this apolitical stance, and some people complain that this leads to some sanitization of important events that shouldn’t be ignored and that it only pays lip service to the social movements that fill the background of the story.  Where the complaint has some merit is in the way it presents representations of the Civil Rights movement and manages to work in an comical awkward moment involving Forrest.  A clip where Forrest politely gives a book back to a student who dropped it during the highly contested school integration protests, and is unaware that he ended up on live television, is certainly in line with Forrest’s character, but it can be seen as a bit in poor taste to throw a comedic scene into a historical moment that still represents an important milestone in Civil Rights.  The thing about the movie is that it is entirely from Forrest’s perspective.  He’s the one telling the story, and in his view, he’s oblivious to the politics of his time.  Some would say that the movie is minimalizing these moments that matter to our society, but at the same time, we as viewers are also aware of the context of these events too.  Robert Zemekis and Eric Roth are not treating Forrest Gump like a history lesson.  It’s much more of a character study, and the character just so happens to live through extraordinary time and meets extraordinary people.

One thing that people can read into the film is that Forrest as a character is a metaphorical representation of America itself; existing through good intentions and principled morals, but oblivious to the consequences of his actions.  Forrest achieves many great things in his story; he becomes a star football player at Alabama, he’s a decorated war hero, he meets at least three presidents, he wins a ping pong tournament in China, he starts a shrimp fishing business that makes him a millionaire, and he even taught Elvis how to dance.  His life is the personification of the American dream.  However, while his life achievements are many, none of it seems to land with the people that he chooses to love in his life.  His childhood sweetheart Jenny goes through a hard fought life of sexual abuse and drug use that ultimately catches up to her.  Lieutenant Dan becomes suicidal and violently depressive after losing his legs in Vietnam, instead of gloriously dying on the battlefield like all his ancestors had before him.  And Bubba doesn’t even make it off the battlefield, dying in Forrest’s arms from his battle wounds.  Even the historical figures that Forrest meets receive horrible fates, from Assassinations to Resignation.  It’s almost like Forrest is an angel of death to everyone but himself.  But, at the same time, the lives of these characters are also enriched by being in Forrest’s orbit.  Jenny’s only source of normality and protection in life comes from the tender love that Forrest shares with her.  Lieutenant Dan accompanies Forrest on his shrimp fishing venture, and he in turn becomes a multi-millionaire himself, and even gets to walk again on “magic” titanium legs.  There may be some merit to the idea that Forrest embodies the sometime naivete and ignorance of America to it’s own faults.  But, the key part of Forrest’s character is that his simple outlook on life also makes him free of prejudice, and that his defining characteristic is unconditional love and respect, even if someone is undeserving of it.  Forrest is not so much a critique, but an ideal of the American dream.

One other thing that stands out about the movie is the way it presents a sense of nostalgia about the past.  Given the context of when it was made, Forrest Gump represented a time where America was feeling comfortable about re-opening some old wounds and confronting some of the darker moments of the past.  The complaints about the minimalization of history perhaps stem from the fact that nothing, from Civil Rights to Vietnam to eventually the AIDS crisis, is ever fully explored in the movie.  And instead of addressing the brutal realities of those historical events, the movie just uses them as a part of the palette in it’s upbeat pastoral of America.  A large part of the nostalgia factor of the movie comes from it’s enormous soundtrack of pop music standards from the era, with songs ranging from Jimi Hendrix, to Credence Clearwater Revival, to Lynard Skynard, to REO Speedwagon all getting playtime in the movie.  Along with the sweeping musical score by Alan Silvestri, the film creates this sense of an idealized version of the past that shows off the grandeur of it’s time period.  The 60’s and 70’s was a prolific period of time with regards to culture, especially when it came to music.  But, this alone does not mean that the time period was free of turmoil, and I don’t think that it’s what the movie is intending to say to it’s audience either.  Like everything else in the movie, the music is part of the background of Forrest’s story.  The movie knows how to place it’s historical context on the cultural touchstone within, without painting a false sense of nostalgia that minimizes the events taking place.  Even still, so many movies that try to whitewash American history by painting a false portrait of the past by milking our sense of nostalgia have often taken a page from the formula put to use in Forrest Gump.  These were harsh times put on screen in the movie, and yet the rocking soundtrack and the glossy filmmaking all make it feel like an idealized world.  It’s not the movie’s intention, because the filmmakers were explicit in letting us know that this was never supposed to be a history lesson.  But, nostalgia can be a powerful tool in shaping our perspective on things, and too often it’s abused by people wanting us to mis-remember the past by falsely presenting us with an idealized one.

Regardless of the critiques, Forrest Gump still stands as a solid piece of entertainment that holds up well after 30 years.  Tom Hanks performance in particular really helps to carry the film, and makes it richer through his ability to give dimensions to a character that could’ve easily fallen into caricature.  The passage of time that the film covers is also interesting to explore, especially looking back on this film as it’s own time capsule.  While it wasn’t the first film to address Vietnam on the big screen (movies like Apocalypse Now and Platoon had already covered it extensively), it certainly put more of a spotlight on the aftermath of the War, especially when it came to the forgotten Veterans whose lives were broken once they came back.  The character of Lieutenant Dan in particular was one that few people had seen spotlighted, especially in a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster, with regards to the War’s aftermath.  Both Gary Sinise and Tom Hanks have become strong advocates for the veteran community since the making of this movie and their charitable contributions have helped many vets get the aid they have desperately needed.  Forrest Gump also represented something of a cathartic exercise in helping America to make sense of an era that for all accounts showed itself as struggling to figure out what it wanted to be.  The era depicted in Forrest Gump was one of a nation in turmoil, seeking to find it’s soul again.  While it does so with a comical twist, the story of Forrest Gump is nevertheless a story about hope in the face of death and destruction.  Forrest is a pure soul that never lets the awful events surrounding him make him bitter, resentful and hateful about the world.  And it’s some, whether he’s aware of it or not, that he is thankfully passing along.  His cross country run inspires a nation to join in because it gives them something good to believe in.  And after Jenny sadly passes away due to an unknown illness (implied to be AIDS), she leaves behind a son she had with Forrest, who he now must be a father to (played by a very young Haley Joel Osment in his first role).  Through Forrest Jr. we get a hopeful sign of a better future as Forrest’s good heart endures for another generation.  That’s ultimately what Zemekis, Hanks, and Roth wanted to convey with the character of Forrest Gump; never giving up on hope.  It’s thing that endures about this movie all these year later; embracing change and letting hope persevere.  That’s why the most famous line from the film resonates: “Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re going to get.”  Forrest treated everyday like a surprise and was eager to embrace that feeling no matter what life brought his way.

There are many right ways to create an engaging biopic for the big screen and also many wrong ways.  Too often we see movies based on the lives of famous musicians take the latter route.  There are good ones to be sure, but too often we see many musical biopics fall back on formula.  What a lot of bad musical biopics seem to forget is that it’s not the songs that the subject wrote and/or sang that made them stand out, but the lives that they lived that offer up the true cinematic story.  Some of the worst offenders, like this year’s Back to Black (2024) or 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody don’t really tell us anything new about their subjects, but merely just show a point by point book report on the lives of these famous singers.  The formula often involves the characters getting inspired to write their big hit song in the most convoluted way possible, and it glosses over how many great songs came into being which is many hours of fine tuning and rewrites, which truthfully don’t lend themselves very well to a cinematic experience.  And then you have the very icky sort of biopic where you see a performer’s tragic story mined for empathy when it at the same shifts the blame away from the people who drove the person to an early grave; probably due to the fact that those same people probably still control the estate that the movie had to gain permission from in order to make the movie.  But then you have the good musical biopics that aren’t afraid to show a person’s life warts and all in the knowledge that it will be more honest and interesting movie character, such as movies like 8 Mile (2002) or Walk the Line (2005), both of which were movies that got the personal approval and involvement of the musician themselves.  And then there are also good biopics that are completely outside of the norm that they take the musicians story into an entirely elevated level, like The Doors (1991) or Rocketman (2019).  I would however say that the best musical biopic that has ever been made would be a film that entirely flies in the face of actual history.  That would be the Oscar-winning Amadeus (1984).

Amadeus can be described as a musical biopic, while at the same time also be considered a complete work of fiction.  The reason it falls into a biopic designation is because it depicts the life of one of the world’s greatest composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  It shows us the life he led during his most productive years composing in the court of the Austrian-Hungarian Emperor Joseph II in the city of Vienna.  We also see him compose his most famous pieces of work, including the operas The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and finally The Magic Flute.  But the movie isn’t about any of that, nor is it really about Mozart either.  The film instead is told from the point of view of another character; a rival composer named Antonio Salieri.  Salieri retells his life’s story to us, which so happens to coincide with Mozart’s, and we see how jealousy and insecurity led him down a path towards destroying Mozart completely, which he ends up succeeding in as Mozart’s misfortunes lead him to an early grave.  But to Salieri’s eternal frustration, he sees Mozart’s musical far out live his short life while Salieri grows old and watches his own legacy wither in Mozart’s shadow.  It’s only fitting that the entirety of the film is framed as a confessional, with Salieri recounting his story to a priest after feeling the guilt of having destroyed Mozart’s life and in turn his own.  Amadeus is not a movie about the music that both of these musicians left behind, but rather about the way that fame destroys the soul.  At the same time, the movie is lavishly constructed to recreate the time period of Mozart and Salieri in great detail, and it does touch upon the actual events that shaped their lives as well.  The success of Amadeus is that the story at it’s center and the fascinating characters within are what drive the film along.  The movie is not concerned about hitting all the historical notes perfectly and in order.  And in Amadeus’ case, it’s a movie more about speculative history rather than true history.

The playwright Peter Shaffer who first penned to script for the stage play Amadeus described his story as a “fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri.”  It was his way of telling us upfront that this story was never meant to be taken as literal history, but rather a universal narrative about jealousy and corruption that just so happened to center around real historical people.  The idea of a rivalry between Mozart and Salieri dates back to a play written by Alexander Pushkin in 1830; a mere couple of years after the death of the real Salieri.  Pushkin’s play was even more accusatory of Salieri, with him actually murdering Mozart at the very end.  Shaffer’s play is not as harsh towards Salieri, merely showing him as being petty and conspiring to deny Mozart success, which in turn aggravates the alcoholism that ultimately ends his life.  Even still, the original Pushkin play is still credited as the inspiration that drove Shaffer to write his own play.  It was Shaffer’s idea to make the center of his story and tell it from his point of view.  This is a great addition to the narrative because it adds the unreliable narrator element to the play.  Yes, we are witnessing the life of Mozart, but it’s through the lens of someone who was jealous of him, and was willing to view him in the most negative light.  And yet, through even Salieri’s spitefulness, there is a reverence for the music.  The theme of divine interaction plays throughout the story of Amadeus, with Salieri often complaining about how God gave such a gift to a boorish, ill-behaved man-child like Mozart.  And the brilliance of Shaffer’s play is that no such gift was ever given; Salieri is only seeing Mozart in that light because he barely knows the man.  He only sees the party animal and clown that Mozart could be in a  public fashion, but he never saw the struggling artist that he was in private; that is until the very end when he sees the true genius in what ends up being his final hours.  The original play debuted to great acclaim in London in 1979, and it soon made it’s way to Broadway afterwards.  Many celebrated actors came and went in the lead roles; one such combination even included heavyweights like Tim Curry as Mozart and Ian McKellan as Salieri.

It’s no surprise that Hollywood was eager to turn this hit play into a big lavish screen adaptation.  Oscar-winning producer Saul Zaentz managed to secure the rights to the play, and he was eager to re-team with Czech filmmaker Milos Forman for the film, having found success before with their film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).  Peter Shaffer was granted the opportunity of adapting his own play, and he managed to find a good collaboration with the spirited Forman.  The one big thing that Forman wanted to break away from the original play was the way it was staged.  Amadeus was a bit of an Avant Garde play in that it was very minimalist when it came to the setting.  In the case of it’s Broadway run, the play was performed “in the round” meaning that the audience encircled the stage, so the actors had to perform merely with simple props and no scenery.  Forman had no interest in telling this story merely through the power of suggestion.  He wanted to make Mozart’s world come alive, and this was thankfully something that Peter Shaffer also agreed to.  To find the right kind of place to recreate the Vienna of Mozart’s lifetime, Forman looked to his own native land and chose the city of Prague to be the shooting location for this project.  Prague in the early 1980’s was still behind the Iron Curtain of Soviet influence, so it wasn’t easy to bring a big Hollywood production to the city, even if the director was a native born son.  They did manage to get the Czechoslovakian government to grant permission, and shooting began in the very well preserved city, which Milos praised as being free of “all that modern shit,” as he described in the movie’s making of documentary.  Shooting in Prague instead of Vienna was not too out of character for a movie centered on Mozart’s life, as Prague maintains more of it’s 18th century architecture to this day, and it was also a place where the real musician did perform from time to time.  One of the places that the real Mozart frequented in Prague was the majestic Estates Theater, which the film makes incredible use out of in the staging of some of Mozart’s most famous musicals.  In every sense of the word, Milos Forman took a minimalist play and gave it the epic makeover that it deserved.

One other bold move by Milos in the making of the film was in the casting of the characters.  Typically, a high brow historical epic will try to give a sense of authenticity to the performances of the actors as part of their placement in their selective time period.  This usually means casting actors with affectations, or who just have British accents as that commonly seems to be Hollywood’s go to high class way of speaking.  For Amadeus however, Milos decided to cast mostly American actors in the key roles, and not have them put on an accent.  This would seem unusual if the movie were trying to be any other historical epic, but in Milos Forman’s hands, it worked.  The key was in finding the right actors who could convey the characters perfectly, to the point where the accents don’t matter.  For Salieri, Milos found the greatest possible choice in veteran stage actor F. Murray Abraham.  Abraham has to carry the film on his shoulder, conveying all the complexity of Salieri, while straddling that fine line between villainy and empathy.  And Abraham’s performance is note perfect, especially in the non-verbal way that he acts through just his facial expressions alone.  There’s a brilliant scene in the movie where Salieri attempts to humiliate Mozart with a comical entry music theme written just for him, and Mozart reworks it in front of him and turns it into something grander and the way Salieri’s expression sinks into depression is just a brilliant work of acting on Abraham’s part.  Of course, his performance is matched brilliantly by Tom Hulce’s turn as Mozart.  It was probably no coincidence that Milos Forman selected one of the stars of Animal House (1978) to be his Mozart, given the party animal nature of the character.  But there is a profoundness to Hulce’s performance as well, especially in the film’s latter half when we see Mozart deteriorate.  He perfectly captures this sense of stunted youth while at the same time portraying the seriousness he devotes to delivering his music.  And casting the very American Hulce in the role of Mozart in a way helps to contemporize the story a bit more, offering a more universal connection between the tragedy of Mozart’s life and how the perils of fame manifest in today’s society.  It’s a gamble on Forman’s part that pays off, and that’s very much a testament to the strengths of the actors.

For a lot of musical biopics it’s the music itself that mostly appeals to the audience.  Most of the bad musical biopics tend to put the famous songs front and center rather than exploring the complexities of the musician playing them.  What is special about Amadeus is that it gives us the explanation about why music affects us so much.  Salieri isn’t so much a great composer as he has the ear to recognize great music.  It’s a duel edged sword that defines his character; he can recognize greatness in music, but is incapable of composing it himself.  He complains to the priest that is hearing his confession, “We would God implant the desire in my head, and then deny me the talent.”  Not that Salieri was a bad composer by any means.  Historically, he was celebrated in his time and even found favor with the Emperor.  But, there’s another brilliant scene that defines the supposed curse that he believes he has.  In his confession, Salieri describes the brilliance of Mozart’s music, picking apart each instruments role in creating a sublime tune, and it’s all through just reading the notes written on the page.  He can understand the language and hear it in his head, but is incapable of creating it on his own.  It’s been said that this revelatory scene really helped people become fans of orchestral music, because cinematically the film broke down musical theory in a way that anyone could understand and relate to.  And it becomes a theme that runs throughout the whole movie.  Salieri cannot escape the adoration he has for the music even as he despises the man who wrote it.  He uses his influence to sabotage the staging of Don Giovanni and yet also attends every single performance as an act of worship.  It’s ultimately what makes the finale so profound, as the film reaches a climax where Salieri is in the position of having to dictate for an ailing Mozart.  In that moment, Salieri finally gets to participate in the genius of Mozart’s work, and as a result, finally find himself on common ground with him.  Very few other musical biopics can make the music such a crucial part of the character’s arc in the story.

For Milos Forman and Peter Shaffer, the narrative is much more than just a look into the lives of historical figures.  At it’s heart, it’s a story about human mortality, and how we devote our lives to being remembered.  Art of any kind is a great way to leave one’s mark, but as Amadeus shows, the way we create that art also matters.  It’s the thing that separates Salieri and Mozart in the end.  Salieri obeyed the rules, did everything he could to win favor and stifle competition, and what that got him was being forgotten to most of history.  Mozart on the other hand broke the rules constantly, burned many bridges along the way, committed a lot of self-damage, and is still remembered fondly to this day.  That’s the curse that Salieri feels that he has, that he does everything the right way and has nothing to show for it, and yet Mozart is able to stumble his way to immortality based on his raw talent.  But, Amadeus also warns us that fame is not the golden ticket that we all would like to think it’d be.  Forman and Shaffer posit this question to us through the different examples of the two lead characters.  Salieri lives a long and comfortable life, but is isolated through crippling regret.  And Mozart lives a rocky, often painful life and dies penniless, but is immortalized through his enduring art.  One desires to be the greatest, while the other wishes to not have the so many notes crashing around in his head.  While so many other biopics revel in the moments of genius that define their subjects lives, Amadeus stands as a cautionary tale about how ambition and fame can sometimes destroy the soul.  It doesn’t give us a how to of what made Mozart a genius.  It honestly never explains how he became so brilliant other than it was just something he was born with.  Of course, the movie itself never has the historical touchstones as things that matter in the story.  In the end, it is fictionalizing a theory about how someone like Salieri may have plotted against Mozart.  And through that we get the themes of jealousy, ambition, and the suffering through one’s art across in a captivating character study.  Also, the music is still fantastic to listen to.

The brilliance of the movie’s tackling of it’s themes comes across perfectly in one of the first scenes.  When the elderly Salieri first meets with the priest, he plays examples of his music, to which the priest confesses he is unfamiliar with despite how beautiful they sound.  Then, to prove his point, Salieri plays the opening notes from Mozart’s “A Little Night Music” and the priest immediately recognizes it.  In that scene, we see exactly what drives the character of Salieri; the tragedy of time leaving him behind.  But after Salieri tells his story to the priest, the movie ends with him feeling a bit unburdened and finally comfortable with himself; self proclaiming his presence as the patron saint of mediocrities.  In a way, that’s what the story of Amadeus has done.  It has put Salieri back into the narrative of Mozart’s legacy, and uses him as the counterpoint to what made Mozart so special.  No other musical biopics have made their central figures stand out as strongly as these archetypal symbols of human geniuses and human fallibility.  One of the great legacies of this movie is that it did help spark a renewed interest in classical music.  The movie’s soundtrack, which featured new orchestrations of original pieces composed by both Mozart and Salieri, became a best-seller and performed well on the charts alongside many contemporary pop artists of the time.  The movie also went on to sweep through the Oscars, winning eight including Best Picture, along with a career second award for Milos Forman for Best Director, a first for Peter Shaffer for his adaptation, and a win for F. Murray Abraham for Best Actor, which he won in competition with his co-star Tom Hulce.  Even 40 years later the movie still feels timesless and strangely even more relevant to today.  In an era of social media, the Salieris of the world have been given more of a voice and that has resulted in increased levels of online bullying and organized attacks like review bombing with the purpose of destroying one’s work of art as well as the artist themselves.  But, the movie shows a more complex portrayal of human fragility than anything else, and how someone like Salieri can be corrupted so easily through his own feelings of inadequacy.  The complaint leveled at Mozart’s music in the film is that he creates “too many notes,” but the movie itself manages to get every note right and creates a beautiful symphony of story and character that stands so much higher than any other musical biopic out there.