Finding Forrester (2000)
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant tells the story of a young African American man named Jamal who confronts his talents while living on the streets of the Bronx. He accidentally runs into an old writer named Forrester who discovers his passion for writing. With help from his new mentor Jamal receives a scholarship to a private school.
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15 films that influenced Finding Forrester
What critics say influenced Finding Forrester
His remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" smacked of acceptance of Van Sant (if not his lovingly crafted remake) by the big guys on the West Coast.
Despite the hostile response to his near frame-by-frame re-creation of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Gus Van Sant doesn't seem to have shaken off his repetition compulsion.
First he Xeroxed Psycho; here he rehashes one of his own films.
After his disastrous remake of Psycho, director Gus Van Sant has returned to the terrain of his most successful film, Good Will Hunting.
For director Gus Van Sant, this is the second time he has dipped into the well of inspirational storytelling; Finding Forrester displays numerous similarities to Good Will Hunting.
As he did in "Good Will Hunting," director Gus Van Sant pours the melted cheese on pretty heavily in "Finding Forrester," another tale of a Young, Working-Class Genius and the Mentor Who Loves Him.
Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) made only one mistake with Finding Forrester.
Therefore, it's not surprising that comparisons to another film with the same premise -- "Good Will Hunting" (1997) -- are being made.
"Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho" featured disaffected youths wandering through their destructive lives to try and find their true calling, while "Good Will Hunting" (which "Forrester" most closely resembles) goes the other way to find its main character afraid to embrace his true calling.
Much in the same way that M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable is a sequel, thematically, to his previous film, The Sixth Sense, Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester is a reprise of his previous-film-once-removed, Good Will Hunting.
You remember, the boyfriend from Flashdance.
It is a time-honored formula that, when handled properly (as in Scent of a Woman, for which Al Pacino won an Oscar), can be effective and affecting.
The movie also has elements of Scent of a Woman in that it focuses on two generations (Connery's old recluse and Brown's teenaged basketball player) teaching each other about life and what it means to live.
A hard turn into “Scent of a Woman” territory feels safe but isn’t without its own entertainment value, and there are worse go-to guys for smug, latently racist teachers than F. Murray Abraham.
By the end we're so well set up for a Scent of a Woman finale that the screenwriter can't quite resist it--along with a starry cameo and an all-thread-tying coda.
There the film verges into Dead Poets Society and Scent of a Woman terrain, with F. Murray Abraham playing a variation on Salieri as Professor Crawford, a weasely embodiment of the those-who-can't-do-teach calumny who doesn't believe someone like Jamal can write as well as he does and goes to embarrassing lengths to prove him a plagiarist.
If "Good Will Hunting" and "Scent of a Woman" were to meet some moonlit night, consummate and make a child, "Finding Forester" would be their adolescent son.
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A budding romance between Jamal and a perky white classmate played by Anna Paquin is also a little more "Romeo and Juliet" than is strictly necessary for the story.
Gus Van Sant was once a top indie director and has now taken to combining the worst elements of his mainstream success Good Will Hunting (1997) with the stuff that made some of his other movies so bad, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994) and Psycho (1998).
"I think that when I was starting out and was making my first three films, Mala Noche [1985], Drugstore Cowboy [1989], and My Own Private Idaho, before I went into another arena, which was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues [1993] and then To Die For [1995], which don't really connect to my own genres, and I'm now into this, aside from Psycho [1999], into this Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester area.
Now Gus Van Sant, onetime guardian of the quirky avant guard ( "To Die For ," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"), takes on an After School Special of a script about a ghetto littérateur savant and his reclusive white mentor, and creates "Finding Forrester" -- a solidly enjoyable, fairly cerebral feature raised above its roots by stout performances from its two leads.
Kudos to acting, script Yes, this is a blatant feel-good movie, and it seems to be a strange choice for Van Sant, who made his reputation as an edgy, indie type who brought us "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989) and "To Die For" (1995).
"I think that when I was starting out and was making my first three films, Mala Noche [1985], Drugstore Cowboy [1989], and My Own Private Idaho, before I went into another arena, which was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues [1993] and then To Die For [1995], which don't really connect to my own genres, and I'm now into this, aside from Psycho [1999], into this Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester area.
Now Gus Van Sant, onetime guardian of the quirky avant guard ( "To Die For ," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"), takes on an After School Special of a script about a ghetto littérateur savant and his reclusive white mentor, and creates "Finding Forrester" -- a solidly enjoyable, fairly cerebral feature raised above its roots by stout performances from its two leads.
But what happened to the off-kilter film-maker last seen at work in To Die For? Van Sant shoots and paces Jamal's developing relationship with Forrester as generically as it's scripted; a weakness all the more apparent when compared with Curtis Hanson's far saltier treatment of similar themes in Wonder Boys.
Yes, this is a blatant feel-good movie, and it seems to be a strange choice for Van Sant, who made his reputation as an edgy, indie type who brought us "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989) and "To Die For" (1995).
There the film verges into Dead Poets Society and Scent of a Woman terrain, with F. Murray Abraham playing a variation on Salieri as Professor Crawford, a weasely embodiment of the those-who-can't-do-teach calumny who doesn't believe someone like Jamal can write as well as he does and goes to embarrassing lengths to prove him a plagiarist.
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Reading the plot description, you have to figure that this is going to be another one of those treacly institutional racism movies, such as Stand and Deliver.
A spectral figure passes; it's "The Window," the local equivalent of To Kill a Mockingbird's Boo Radley.