This Was Divine Intervention

The winning film for best picture during the 67th Academy Awards in 1995 was Forrest Gump directed by Robert Zemeckis starring Tom Hanks who played Forrest Gump, which saw him win best actor for the film as well. The film was about Forrest Gump who was not the smartest guy but conquers his lower intelligence by accidentally being involved in some of the biggest world events in the 20th century. Forrest Gump was a very well written story as the audience overtime sees Forrest overcome all sorts of problems and difficult situations. One of the competing films for best picture in the 67th Academy Awards was Pulp Fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino. Pulp Fiction is almost like multiple different stories in one. Two hitmen Vincent and Jules over the course of the movie are conflicted as their stories are interwoven with Butch played by Bruce Willis and Mia played by Uma Thurman. Pulp Fiction should have one best picture of the 67th Academy Awards because of how different it was and how well the story was told. Although Forrest Gump was also a very well written story, Quentin Tarantino directed and constructed Pulp Fiction so uniquely and interesting to where the character development and story shines over Forrest Gump.

One thing that both of these films do very well is character development. Forrest Gump is not the most intelligent person and does not notice or think the same way as a regular person would. He has many tribulations in life but never lets them interfere with his life. When he was a little kid he had leg braces to walk. When bullies started to chase him he went from not being able to run to breaking the leg braces and full on sprinting away. Throughout the whole film something either bad happens to Forrest or people try to use him or mess with him because of his low IQ but he always manages to turn that bad thing and make it into a good thing. When he broke his leg braces off, he found out that he was faster than everybody else. The ability to run faster than everybody else made him run away from any bully as well as in the future get a football scholarship, save lives in the war, and run a shrimp boat. The audience would have never thought he would be able to do the stuff that he has done in his lifetime. The character development of him at the beginning of the movie seeming hopeless and a little off centered, to him accomplishing all of these different things really shows who Forrest Gump came to be in the film.

Another character who changed a lot throughout the film was his lifetime crush Jenny. Jenny was Forrest's friend and crush since childhood. They were stuck like glue during childhood but as the movie progresses they grow apart. Most of the film is also Forrest trying to find Jenny. Jenny went from a nice sweet girl with parent troubles when her and Forrest were kids but once she got older her problems overtook her. She started hanging with the wrong crowd and started to use drugs heavily. Forrest cared so much for Jenny and had always wanted to be with her. Whenever Forrest did help Jenny or tried to at least she always blew him off. This can make the audience change their opinion from liking this sweet girl Jenny to really disliking her. Forrest knew that she was going down the wrong path and so did the audience and for Jenny to just blow him off can really change what you think about her.

The characters in Pulp Fiction seem very unrelatable at first glance. They are murderers, drug addicts, and mob tied. Although they may seem unrelatable at first, those characteristics are not the only ones the audience sees from them. Jules Winnfield (played by Samuel L. Jackson) is one of the hitmen and undergoes a lot of development in the film. Jules takes his job seriously and is good at it, but he is not satisfied with what he is doing. He tries to get out of the business because he thought god stopped the bullets from hitting him and Vincent in their opening scene. He called this divine intervention. Jules took this as a warning from god. He got out at the right time because if he did not listen to this warning, he would have ended up like Vincent who died because he stayed in the business. Onto Vincent, he does not take anything seriously. He cracks jokes and does drugs. Instead of saying it was divine intervention when him and Jules almost died, he said they were lucky instead. By not quitting his job as a hitman like Jules it reveals that he would rather be doing something that he believes in rather than being someone who he is not. At first, the audience might think that Vincent and Jules are just two goofy hitmen, but as the film progresses the audience learns that they are pretty different in what they want in life and that the only similarity between them was that they were good at their job. The characters and their development in this film are developed very well with the help of how the movie was constructed.

The film Pulp Fiction is one of those films that you have to constantly be watching closely if you want to understand it. If you miss one thing that happened, the story could be pretty confusing. That is why it is such a great film. This film used a non linear timeline to help tell its story. The film opens with the restaurant robbers Pumpkin and Honey Bunny who after that opening scene do not come into Vincent and Jules' story till later in the film. The film jumps from the beginning of Jules and Vincent to later on in Jules and Vincent's story to where Vincent and his boss's wife Mia to then tell the Butch story to then Jules and Vincent again. This order is integral to how the story unfolds. This order is what made people sit at the edge of their seats. This made the audience want to know how one story intersects to the other and how the other story intersects with the main story. Compared to Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump is told through narration in chronological order. Forrest Gump being in chronological order does not automatically make it inferior to Pulp Fiction, but the majority of films that are made are in chronological order. To see all these different stories and different parts of the stories in this nonlinear order again is more engaging and makes the audience think more of what they just saw or saw earlier in the film than one in regular chronological order.

The 67th Academy Awards for best picture had two very well written movies of Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction. Forrest Gump won that year but because of character development and the structure of the film, Pulp Fiction should have won that year. Both Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction had great character development. How everyone thought Forrest would never be able to do anything, Forrest accomplished and went through it all. With Jenny being a sweet young girl to overtime becoming a drug addict, Forrest Gump had some great character development. Although that may be true, Quentin Tarantino constructed Pulp Fiction to have a brilliant nonlinear timeline with different stories in one, plus that having a great impact on character development, Pulp Fiction should have been the film to win best picture that year.