Finding Forrester (2000)

I had known director Gus Van Sant only for Good Will Hunting, Milk, and a segment of Paris, je t'aime. When I learned that FF resembles GWH in that its protagonist is a young man who tends to hide his brilliance so as not to stand out from his lower-class buddies, I got interested. One key difference intrigued me further: It's about writing.

Between basketball skills and test scores, sixteen-year-old Jamal Wallace (breakout Rob Brown, who had expected to be an extra!) gets a scholarship to attend a ritzy private school, which he accepts with some uncertainty, since it's a very different culture from his usual environs. Around the same time, on a dare, he attempts to burglarize the apartment of a locally feared, mysterious recluse (Sean Connery) but panics and leaves behind a backpack full of his secret writings. The recluse, one William Forrester, returns them with a load of constructive criticism, which inspires Jamal to come back for more. It takes Jamal a while to figure out that William is a literary one-hit wonder who's pretty much disappeared for half a century (based loosely on J.D. Salinger). Naturally, each one can learn from the other, with William gradually opening up to Jamal and then people in general.

Can the audience learn too? On that score, it's hit and miss. We do get a handful of tips that seem worth pursuing for an inspiring writer, but beware when Jamal or William spouts trivia: About half of them are on the IMDb goofs page. Not that I normally recommend movies as a source of real-world knowledge anyway.

The racial element doesn't come up explicitly very much, but Jamal moves from an all-Black crowd to a nearly all-White crowd. He's easily the darkest-skinned student in any shot at his new school, even on the basketball team. Only William directly says anything about race, and he claims to be testing Jamal (as he does a lot), specifically for whether a moderate expression of racism would drive Jamal away. We also get a hint of it from arrogant English teacher Robert Crawford (F. Murray Abraham), the closest character to a villain off the basketball court. OTOH, any apparent tension between Jamal and classmate Claire Spence (Anna Paquin) is sexual, not racial.

The climax, if that's the word for it, reminds me partly of Scent of a Woman and partly of Stand and Deliver. This points to why I needed a while to decide whether I found FF good or merely OK: I've seen a bunch of other films like it. Did I get anything new(ish) out of it? Just a little.

Ultimately, I erred on the positive side. I could identify with both Jamal and William in different ways, and it's nice to see them both improve. It made me want to write some more, tho I'm unlikely to try a novel again. I won't say FF packs an emotional punch, but it is stimulating to the soul.