Finding Forrester

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Hermione W Oct 17, 2018 I think this movie appeals especially to those of us who try to make a living by writing.

Leia L Jul 24, 2018 Movies about writers are notoriously hard to do, since writing by its nature is not cinematic. "Finding Forrester" evades that problem by giving us a man who wrote one good novel a long time ago, and now writes no more: He has turned into a recluse afraid to leave his own apartment. There are shades here of Hitchcock's "Rear Window," as Connery peaks out from behind a massive pair of binoculars, otherwise used for birding, watching for rare specimens perched to take flight-Brown's character, then, is like a black swan, thought impossible by the stuffy pendant (F. Murray Abraham in perfect form), but a reality waiting to be discovered in a land untrodden. What makes one a writer? This is the driving question at the heart of the movie: Is it sheer talent, like Brown's character at the film's beginning? Is it a matter of mastering the rules, as Abraham's character has done? Is it about asking the right questions and being a good observer, like Connery's character, who has gone some 50 years without writing another novel? In the end, what the movie suggests is that the genius of writing cannot be identified with a single individual, but is in truth about the network of relations a person cultivates: Having lost his family, Forrester can write again once he has formed new friendships; Jamal grows as a writer, allowing his work to be exposed, once he has found himself among peers and powers that support his talent; while Crawford will never be the writer he wants to be because he intellectually isolates himself, narcissistically imagines himself as above the fray of his students. How telling it is, then, that Brown's bedside table and Connery's apartment are overflowing with classic works of literature, while Abraham's classroom is watched over by the portraits of these great (dead white male) authors? Writing relies on and rallies signifying networks-the present review, for example, begins with words taken from Ebert's 2000 essay on the movie-and this is what Abraham's character fundamentally fails to understand. Jamal's writing succeeds because it exists in conversation with the work of others-he is even faulted and penalized for this-while Crawford treats those texts as petrified, statuesque, unable to enter into dialogue, words to quote and criticize. Surrounded by extreme wealth and power, the originality of writing has everything to do with the monetary and copyright value it produces, and not the unique genius and voice it can express. Crawford's failure here is the failure of inflated certainty that arises from an apotheosis of egoistic mastery; Abraham's character presumes that he knows what writing is, a presumption that reifies writing and makes it into a commodifiable Thing, rather than understanding it to be a practice, an unfolding that exists only as a becoming. Hence he thinks he can locate (that is to say, "find") writing, which does not move and does not change: Crawford believes he can remove Jamal from his creative environs, from Forrester's casual apartment to his own stuffy office, and still produce the same effects, because what matters is the man (the gender matters) and not the network and emplacement. No wonder, then, that Crawford completely misses Jamal's writing potential, for he is like the hobbyist who believes the only place to watch for birds is in the park. In this view, it is as easy to overlook the possibility that creative genius could arise in the Bronx as it is easy to ignore the irony that this century's "Great American Novel" was written by a Scotsman. And here is the greatest differend (to borrow Lyotard's term) of the film, around which its central division circles: On the one hand is an attitude best summarized by Joyce-"the supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring"-while on the other hand is an attitude, not the opposite but from a reverse angle, exemplified by Lacan calling the author "only a pen-pusher." What matters to Crawford is the biography of an author, a reading of the text as a keyhole into a person's private life, a philosophy shared by so many critics ("what is the writer *really* trying to say?") that it has sent Forrester into hiding; for Forrester, however, what matters about an author's life is its potential for exciting creativity and genius, not biographical facts, but how experience can be transformed and sublimated into art. To do so is to practice the work of writing. See more

Albus S Apr 7, 2018 Intelligent and beautiful.

Luke R Mar 21, 2018 Thoughtful story of how important a little friendship and willingness to mentor can be.

Mar 6, 2018 This is one of my favorite movies even years sfter iVe seen it. If you havent waTched It Yet, do yourself a favor.

Han S Feb 8, 2018 The film feels like a diet Good Will Hunting and an Oscar run for Connery but it is a good film. Connery delivers a great performance in what was touted as his last and should have been. It's a very nice film and extremely watchable just nothing really new. See more

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Finding Forrester

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