Greetings,
Have I mentioned that I love movies about writers? Because I do. And today I want to talk about one of my favorites, that just so happens to star one of my favorite people. Not to mention that I think some aspects of the plot are quite relevant today. But more on that later. Let's talk about Finding Forrester. Yes, this is the movie that gave us that "You're the man now, dog" thing. God bless.
Finding Forrester is a 2000 film directed by Gus Van Sant. It's about a young man named Jamal Wallace, played by Rob Brown. He lives in New York in not the best of neighborhoods with his mother and brother, played by Busta Rhymes. Yeah. He gets the chance to go to a very prestigious school, due to his skills on the basketball court, but he also has a passion for reading and a gift for writing. There, he befriends Coleridge, played by Michael Pitt and Claire, played by Anna Paquin, who he develops a close relationship with. He also butts heads with a professor named Crawford, played by F. Murray Abraham, due to his suspicions about Jamal's skills as a writer. Because of where he comes from, I presume. Oh, no. Is he one of those people who thinks that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare because he was poor and didn't have a degree? Mercy.
Outside of his academic life, Jamal inadvertently meets a recluse named William Forrester, played by Sean Connery. It turns out that he is also a writer, publishing a superb and highly praised book fifty years earlier with nothing to follow. And the book they show in the film looks quite short for being considered a masterpiece of literature, might I say. It's nice to know that not all of those have to be the size of War and Peace. Moving on. Though the two have some tempestuous encounters, caused by how they originally become acquainted, they eventually begin to learn more about and from each other, and become genuine friends. The scenes between them are the highlights of the film, and thankfully, they take up a big portion of it. Despite how different these two actors are, especially in experience, they have incredibly good chemistry and seem so natural carrying on these conversations with each other. They perfectly portray the exchanges that would happen when someone is being mentored. I can't help but wonder if the off-screen friendship between Connery and Brown was reflected in the film.
It is this relationship that is the core of the story, which is really about finding out about people from more than what we see. Or what we assume. And that it's never too late to learn something in life and change for the better. Both Jamal and Forrester learn from one another and grow as people thanks to the time they spend together. It didn't matter that they were different ages or races or that they came from different places with different experiences. They took the time to put aside whatever assumptions they may have had about each other and listened to each other instead. And because they were open to that, because they didn't scoff at the idea that one can learn from something other than a clone of one's self, they were able to improve. They affected each other's lives, and, had they not taken a chance on this friendship, they would have been worse off.
And this lesson of looking passed what we see to discover who someone is does not confine itself to only the friendship between Jamal and Forrester. In fact, there are quite a few instances of characters judging one another based on assumptions rather than the truth of who they are. Once they open their eyes and look more closely and honestly, they realize what is truly there at the core of every person they meet. That is why I think this film is important, even today. Maybe especially today.
So, in case you haven't guessed, I highly recommend this movie. It's a well-written story and the acting is superb. And, yes, it is a great film about writers, which gives it automatic points in my book, but as you can tell by what I said, it is also about so much more.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
