Finding Forrester (2000)

Document Type

Miscellaneous

Publication Date

5-2017

Abstract

The film Finding Forrester came out in 2000 and was directed by Gus Van Sant. It stars a young kid named Jamal Wallace who lives in the Bronx and attends an ordinary public school. He maintains a C average in school and lives at home with his mother and older brother. All his life Jamal has just tried to fit in. To do this, he has proudly displayed his prowess at basketball, while keeping his skill and love of writing a secret. On a dare, Jamal happens upon one of the greatest authors alive, an old man named William Forrester. Throughout the film, these two create an unbreakable relationship as William Forrester helps Jamal with his writing and his life decisions, and as Jamal helps William reintegrate back into the world and find a new meaning in life.

Finding Forrester is mostly about the mentor/student relationship that Jamal and William have, but it also deals with other issues. Throughout the film, Jamal has to deal with problems derived from poverty in the Bronx, coming of age as he has to start thinking about his life and future, and race as he attends a new school that is mostly well-off white students. But while most of the ideas of the film deal with Jamal and him overcoming his assorted challenges, the biggest idea is about how Jamal helps Forrester overcome the various issues in his life. In Finding Forrester, Van Sant shows that in many poverty stricken situations, those that try to assist and care for the less fortunate often come out the most helped and improved. He demonstrates this through the intricacies of Jamal and Forrester’s relationship in an idealized version of the Bronx, in order to disprove the stigma that exists in many films that the poor and helpless can do nothing except be saved.

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