“Yo, you ever see him? The window?”
“Nah.”
“But he see us, man.”
“The window” is an unnerving phantom figure regularly seen gazing though a pair of binoculars at the world outside his frozen-in-time apartment in the South Bronx. Two large round lenses and wisps of white hair poking furtively out from amidst the faded curtains. That’s all the young basketball players see when they gaze upwards from their world of white paint and blacktop. They don’t see the man, his genius or his pain. Nor do they see their own. They are looking at the window not through it. All they see is a pane of glass covered with a diaphanous fabric through which some creepy old man trespasses on their privacy. None of them (including the old hermit) dares peer through the window straight into his own soul. None save 16-year-old Jamal Wallace.
Gus Van Sant’s Finding Forrester is a soul-stirrer reminiscent of his previous “young genius lives up to his potential” flick Good Will Hunting. I won’t lie to you. Some of the less than enticing things you’ve heard about this film are true. Yes, it’s trite. Trite bordering on schmaltzy, in fact. Yes it’s predictable. And yes, at 136 minutes, it may be just a wee bit too long. But, one more thing is true. I walked out of the theater feeling good.
Why? Because early on in the film I stopped looking at the screen and started looking through the window. Finding Forrester forced me to look at myself. It made me confront my weaknesses and my passions. It made me cut through the “woulda coulda shoulda”s and realize that what I should be saying is “YES! I can do it, I want to do it and, you know what, I’m gonna do it.”
I’ll confess, the film-induced fervor to live up to my potential has diminished somewhat, but the good feeling hasn’t. While the screenplay may have been somewhat lackluster, the bright shiny window it provided for me to gaze through was definitely worth the price of admission.
”Whatever, man. I’ll go up dere.”
On the outside, Jamal Wallace (wonderfully portrayed by acting novice Rob Brown) was a talented, young African-American athlete, a C student and one of the guys. On the inside, Jamal was a great deal more. He was an avid reader, a gifted writer, a remarkable scholar and quite a lot more that he was willing to allow the world around him to see. When he accepted a dare to climb up a fire escape and into “the window’s” apartment to bring back a trophy, he didn’t quite know what he would be coming away with. He thought he was fleeing the intriguing apartment (a Disneyworld for verbivores) with a simple knife he found lying amid the clutter of endless volumes of books. What he had yet to realize was that the trip through the window would leave him with a newfound sense of purpose: not to fit in, but to excel.
Perhaps I’m getting too wrapped up in symbolism. That’s the frustrated writer in me, I suppose. This is a film, after all, not a work of literature crying out to be analyzed. Or is it?
When young Jamal hastily flees the apartment after being surprised by its mysterious reclusive occupant (Sean Connery playing yet another old curmudgeon with a strong authoritative presence) he leaves behind a backpack filled with notebooks that bear (and bare) his writing. These capture the attention of the old man — William Forrester, a literary genius in his own write…sorry right — who takes the time to provide his unsolicited commentary. Days after the break in, the backpack (containing the annotated notebooks) drops out of the window like manna from heaven to the guidance-starved young man who passed beneath it. Thus begins the relationship between student and mentor. Yet, as the film progresses, and we see the old hermit reawakening to the world outside the window, we begin wondering who is mentoring whom?
Oddly enough, many of the comments Forrester scribbles into Wallace’s notebook can apply to the film itself. “Constipated writing.” and “Where are you taking me?” both pop into the viewer’s mind. So does “this passage is fantastic.” While some of the film’s moments are ridiculous (how can a 70-year-man who hasn’t left his apartment in 40 years just hop on a bicycle and pedal all the way from the Bronx to Manhattan?) others are sublime. Some of the lines are charming and witty while others are just plain weak. Oddly enough, one of the weakest bits of writing may just be the recitation of what is supposedly a great bit of writing. Don’t you just love irony?
While the script may be lacking at times, the cast is not. Accompanying Hollywood newcomer Brown (who auditioned for this, his first acting role just to be able to earn money to pay off his cell phone bill) on the screen are a plethora of Oscar winners: Sir Sean Connery; F. Murray Abraham (who plays the frustrated rival to the title character a la his portrayal of Salieri in Amadeus); Anna Paquin as Jamal’s wealthy, lily white classmate and love interest, Claire who provides him with the clarity he needs to make a number of key decisions (not too subtle there folks); and Good Will Hunting’s Matt Damon, in a “wink wink” cameo appearance.
Finding Forrester attempts to make the viewer reevaluate many of his assumptions as the characters reevaluate their own. Does it succeed? You’d have to judge that for yourself. Where I would say the movie succeeds is in motivating the audience to look within and seek out what gifts they may be denying. Forrester tells us, “for if we wait to long, we risk learning that life is not a game that is won, or lost… it is a game that, too often, simply isn’t played.” Schmaltzy? Yep. But, I daresay we can all benefit from a little schmaltz now and then. Go ahead. Take a look through that window. You may be surprised at what you’ll see inside.
Did the film change my life? To some extent it did. Finding Forrester gave me the impetus I needed to actually deal with my fear of writing a movie review. Will I be able to venture into some of the other categories that have filled me with dread? Um… I think I’d better wait for the video release for a refresher.
A drama about a unique relationship between an eccentric, reclusive novelist and a young, black, amazingly gifted scholar-athlete. After the novelist ...More at HotMovieSale.com
Academy Award-winner Sean Connery stars in this powerful and unforgettable drama from acclaimed director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, To Die For)....More at Buy.com
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