Adnan Sid

Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks as the eponymous lead deserves neither of the extreme ends of the polarised responses it has received since its 1994 release, neither the unblinking adulation nor the over-thinking, undiluted condemnation. It was brilliant in its format – the saga of a slow-witted man chatting with strangers on a bus-stop bench and recounting his life story parallel to world-altering events that he had witnessed up close or even participated in without realising their significance, unaware that he had sometimes personally influenced great artists or the course of national affairs through several tumultuous decades of American history.