This is what it feels like when a film becomes reality after 30 years

A straight road stretches through the desert. To the left and right there is nothing but red dust, low grass and strange rock formations. Then I drive up a flat hill and suddenly there are people on the road and I have to brake quickly. There is actually no reason to leave the car here, in the middle of nowhere, and step out into the sweaty heat. And yet there is every reason: the people who are milling around here are film fans. Even 30 years later, they are for Forrest Gump here. Just like me.

Forrest Gump turns 30 – and it will be a desert party

The film Forrest Gump was released in the USA on July 6, 1994. The tragicomic ride through American history from the 1950s to the 1980s went on to win six Oscars (including Best Actor, Best Director and Best Film). It didn’t need rejected sequels or remakes. It was and is enough in itself as a complete work (currently streaming on Netflix).

Three decades later, Forrest Gump is still Robert Zemeckis’ best film (sorry, Back to the Future) for me and has rightly gone down in film history. After such a long time as a cult film, Forrest Gump has many memorable scenes that stand out. From chocolates on bus benches to Vietnam War rescues to ping-pong duels and heart-rending declarations of love, the choice is wide. But my vacation this year took me to the hot US states of Arizona and Utah and so I walked in the footsteps of the jogging Forrest.

In his film, Forrest Gump spends three years running a cross-country marathon. He crosses the continent again and again before suddenly stopping in the middle of the desert and explaining to his followers: “I’m tired, very tired. I think I’ll go home.”

It is a perfect setting: The picturesque scenery of Monument Valleywhich has enhanced countless westerns, can be seen in the distance in the scene. The road stretching almost to the horizon symbolically shows the long journey that our hero has traveled. But then there is a flash of inspiration, a longing and a decision – and with the change of mind, a sudden change of direction takes place: homeward bound.

Forrest Gump shows me how a film leaves its footprint in reality

While Tom Hanks’ fictional Forrest Gump finds the realization that he needs to return home in a place in the middle of nowhere, it is the exact opposite for the real people who make the pilgrimage here. None of the tourists who stop here for a short time are at home in this barren place on Navajo tribal land. Rather, it is wanderlust that has driven them and me to come here. And yet the search for something familiar leads us here. The search for a Place that was previously only known to us as an image.

Finding the iconic spot in the desert is not difficult: Even Google Maps shows the “Forrest Gump Point”.

One and a half kilometers before the finish, a sign announces the “Forrest Gump Hill” where travellers can park their cars safely. Probably because enough people already stop at the side of the road or walk on the asphalt – although a speed limit of 70 miles per hour (approx. 113 km/h) is the Pedestrian or jogger existence becomes a dangerous affair might.

After I climb over the top of the hill, it suddenly appears before me, as if someone had taken it out of the film: the ruler-straight road in front of the imposing red rock giants, which no set designer of the time or computer artist of today could have imagined. I am at the Destination of my cinematic home arrived.

It’s not often that a film becomes as influential as Forrest Gump, that it even leaves its mark on maps and street signs. Here, the dream of leaving a significant work in film history has become a reality. The true endurance is shown in the people who have left their living rooms to gather here on the sandy side of the road in a shared moment of breathless pause (or running).

Run, Forrest, run! – I’m following you

Now I park my rental car off the road and I can no longer control myself: After looking up and down the highway without seeing any more cars, I rush off. At first it’s just a slow jog, but then I pick up the pace and feel the warm desert wind in my hair. I don’t care about sweaty T-shirts right now. My thoughts fly away and nothing but the experience of the (film) moment remains. If life is a box of chocolates, then this is a moment with a particularly delicious filling.

The fact that I share this running moment with countless other onlookers makes it all the more meaningful. A smile thrown at each other here and an offer to take a photo there make a Sense of community It is a feeling that must have been shared by Forrest Gump’s jogging followers in the film. The landscape of Monument Valley was of course here long before and was breathtakingly beautiful to look at. But charged with 30 years of film memories, the experience becomes even more meaningful.

Or to paraphrase Tom Hanks’ iconic character: Forrest Gump may not be a smart man, but he knows what movie love is. And anyone who still stops here in the desert after 30 years knows it too.

On that note, happy birthday, Forrest. May you keep running for another 30 years to bring movie fans home.