One of the friendly faces of the most popular Hollywood. Tom Hanks is, in that unfading appearance, a kind of American-style Jordi Hurtado who has managed to reach the general public with various chameleonic interpretations. But in addition to the close appearance of him, he also keeps his collection of Oscars that attest to a more academic recognition. A dual prestige earned by getting it right in his records and in the selection of productions in which to appear as a main or supporting actor.
Guys like Tom Hanks are the counterweight to current hunk of the guy Brad Pitt or Johnny Deep (if the "gallants" thing is not already out of date in these times). Because it is easier to get closer to the common face to blend in with the adventure of the moment. It is good to idealize the protagonist in search of remote reflections of the spectator. Enjoy the vague sensation, the remote resemblance to that gaze of our celluloid idols. Then they already take care of trying to make us participate in their interpretation towards the legendary or to immerse ourselves in contrasts between the image and the background of the soul.
Tom Hanks takes care of making everything believable from the first gesture. And so begins that credible journey for us, ordinary citizens, including Tom Hanks. With it we can get closer to that plot to live it in the shoes of another. Advantages of not having the perfect physiognomy to combine realism with any other fictional component. Naturalness, excellent interpretation until achieving that feeling of spontaneity. An achievement that, as an actor, is what matters most. And by the way, as a parenthesis, Tom Hanks also makes his first steps as a writer, you have it here.
Top 3 Recommended Tom Hanks Movies
Forrest Gump
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:Metaphorical, hyperbolic, symbolic… Forrest Gump is a film that addresses disability from an allegorical point of view. And fantasy sometimes serves the emotional cause more than the more conscientious realism. Because we all know that Forrest Gump's prodigy is a pipe dream. But the mere fact of posing that titanic future of Forrest around the world makes us also raise our eyes when observing anyone who faces his most epic daily life from difference or limitation.
An actor like Tom Hanks was needed to convey everything that Forrest conveys. Only Tom Hanks could make the character something as histrionic as it was relatable. Without more stridency than the exaggerations presented as allegorical support for the plot, Forrest takes us through that United States in boiling water between wars, social demands, countercultural awakenings, including the hippie movement to emerge victorious from each new challenge that life offers him.
Then there is the aspect of impossible love, of idealization that any person can go through as that vital moment of falling in love, which in Forrest's case is a mastery of emotions between self-denial, a point of idealization even in the sensation of fidelity as the only way to understand love. Idyllic, utopian, perhaps. But it is still a teaching on aspects of giving oneself to the loved one, quite neglected by more individualistic impositions.
It is also a fun film, full of humor, just the perfect counterweight to predispose us to invincible tears in the best scenes. And it will be for scenes full of that emotionally charged humor... because from the legendary chocolates, to the friendship with Bubba Gump or going for a jog from coast to coast of the United States. Unique moments of cinema.
I remember the day when, in the very Times Square, I bought my Bubba Gump T-shirt. And it is that it is a film that makes myths of each of its characters that revolve around good old Forrest.
Castaway
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:It shouldn't be easy to tackle a role like the one Tom Hanks played for that castaway named Chuck Nolan. An entrepreneur from a delivery company who is saved from death at sea by being dragged to a remote island. He, who lives by contemplating time as the essential tool to achieve his goals, now has a whole ocean of water and time. The question is, when you get up and contemplate the loneliness around you, what to do with all the time that is coming your way. Optimizing it is surviving. It is never so essential to beat seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years until you get back home.
Paradoxically, packages of different shipments pending from your company are arriving to the coast of your island. They will never reach their recipient, dissatisfied customers, business in decline. That matters little now ... Or a lot, that's why he keeps one of the packages unopened, waiting and hoping to deliver it himself to its destination. It is to consider that option or to faint at the idea that he will never be able to find himself again in his old world of deliveries "on time", of his wife and his family project.
The worst is curiously somewhat trivial. A toothache that causes him to suffer from that irreparable pain without his good dentist who had been waiting for him for months in his real life. And even worse, as time passes and the pain increases, it all accumulates. Because new pains appear in the abysses at the highest point of the beach, where a branch hangs as if inviting him to become the flag of that place left by the hand of God.
Without any dialogue, except for the aberrant conversation with Wilson, the ball that becomes his confidant, the adventure for survival brings us closer to atavistic fears surrounded by the exuberant beauty of the island, of the nights full of stars. Riding the waves that break on the island requires skill and a spirit that Chuck is about to lose in successive attempts to get out of there sailing on any rudimentary boat.
Until he succeeds and begins to drift, aimlessly, dodging storms in the middle of a beautifully hostile ocean. He encounters a whale who watches him with pity. When his fortune dawns, a large ship passes by him and picks him up on the brink of death. What awaits him in his previous world after years left for dead is a loneliness even greater than the one he suffered in that piece of land that welcomed him to turn him into a missed Ulysses who returns from his Ithaca knowing that there are no utopias on this Earth.
The green Mile
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:In a shared role, Tom Hanks plays a Paul Engecomb on whom a sword of Damocles hangs around justice. The story of Stephen King found a great replica in this movie that makes us fantasize about ideas of good and evil, of strange coincidences that pose salvation in the hands of those who least adore humans. Something like a new Jesus Christ who bears the sins of all, who expiates bad consciences of the true monsters against which the human being also brings out his most monstrous and vengeful side.
Because the black John Coffey embodies the worst of evils, the ominous being in whose hands the two vilely murdered girls appeared. There is no redemption possible for him. He will be one of those who ride the lightning after traveling the green mile. And yet, the giant John Coffey counterbalances that hatred concentrated within him with unparalleled healing power. Only, as happened with Jesus Christ, no one can believe that he is not a monster. And with his death everything will end.
Until the day of his execution we know of his abilities, of his magic, of sensations of rabid humanity behind bars, where the bad guys can be outside, while the souls on whom the most summary justice is focused only offer repentance for works that perhaps They never did.
A movie in which we adore John Coffey, hoping that justice can overturn his final sentence. Because in his hands all evil disappears, all affected spirit recovers. In his antagonistic role we find Percy Wetmore, a posh boy placed as a prison officer to try to have a job in the face of his manifest disability and his frustrations capable of turning him into a hateful character. Just punishment finds in the end the little guy in question ...
As often happens with the stories told by Stephen King, whether they are full of terror or fantasy, its endings offer us that particular point of meditation on unsuspected aspects that assail the tragic, the moral, the magical as part of a popular imaginary that borders on beliefs or fears.
2 comments on “The 3 best Tom Hanks movies”