As far as I can tell, no one has commented on the religious aspects of Forest Gump. The movie briefly seems to be ridiculing those impulses, when a band of anonymous nobodys follow Gump on his cross-country jaunts, waiting breathlessly for his pronouncements, but in fact the whole film has an impulse towards godliness. I thought the film a text straight out of The Course in Miracles, with the idea that one doesn't have to do a thing in life and marvelous things will occur simply as the result of one's idosyncratic gifts--even Vietnam yields beautiful memories. A friend in the TCIM recently said that he watched Schindler's List "very closely," and noticed that the Jews didn't look "particularly happy," while "the germans all looked as if they were enjoying themselves." In Gump I was amazed at the way the film didn't progress, that the simple lessons of the opening sequences were repeated again and again without any new spins. This whole anti-experience and anti-growth notion is what I disliked most about the film. The ad featuring Gump on a park bench, overhearing the voice of god, is exactly the right image to sell the movie, and a reason for others to revile it. I did think the Nike business and the explanation of running as a reaction to grief was fairly good, and the special effects were the most extraordinary I've ever seen--almost frighteningly so, in that they weren't used for space ships and such, but to change reality in a sneakier, more dangerous way. My final reaction is that this is the first post-Kael movie, in that this blend of shrewd sentimentality is exactly what she stood up against for so long, and exposed. Perversely, she probably loves the film. Edmund Carlevale.