“My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Forrest Gump is one of those rare movies that can make a grown man both laugh and cry.  Although a bit farfetched, it’s a remarkable feat of screenwriting, producing, directing, and acting that successfully weaves together the life of a mentally handicapped person, a heartwarming love story, and side-splitting humor.

The mark of a truly great actor is when he plays a part so well that in your mind he permanently becomes the character he portrays, so much so that you can’t imagine anyone else playing the same role.  Even today, years after I first saw the movie, Tom Hanks is Forrest Gump.

Interestingly, the love story in this film had one thing in common with two totally different kinds of love stories, The Phantom of the Opera and Fanny.  As in those films, Forrest Gump and Jenny, the love of Forrest’s life, had been playmates when they were little kids.  Though Forrest has always been in love with Jenny, she chooses to run away from an abusive home and lead the free-love, drug-filled life of a classic sixties hippie.

The ending is a clever combination of both sad and happy (don’t want to give it away, just in case you still haven’t seen the film).  It’s a movie filled with great lines, but the topper is when Forrest, sitting on a bus-stop bench and trying to strike up a conversation with a total stranger, offers her a piece of candy from a box of chocolates on his lap.

In trademark, from-out-of-the-blue Forrest Gump style, he then says to her, “My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re gonna get.”  It was another great example of simplistically brilliant screenwriting — something that causes everyone in the audience to think to himself, “Ain’t it the truth.”

There’s no question that, through free will, you have a great deal of control over your destiny, but a little nuisance called “the inevitable” will always have its say about the way things turn out — fame or insignificance … billions or poverty … winning the love of one’s live or enduring a loveless life … living to a hundred or dying in a traffic accident at a young age.  Mrs. Gump was right:  The inevitable guarantees that life will always be like a box of chocolates.

From the movie Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks’ famous line from the bus-stop bench scene: