Finding Forrester

by Stephen Farber

After his disastrous remake of Psycho, director Gus Van Sant has returned to the terrain of his most successful film, Good Will Hunting. Finding Forrester tells a similar story of a gifted but unschooled young man--in this case an inner city teenager named Jamal (Rob Brown)--who comes under the influence of a mentor who helps to nurture his talents. This time the more intriguing character is the older man, William Forrester (Sean Connery), a reclusive, J.D. Salinger-type writer who has not published anything in years but rediscovers his calling as a result of his relationship with Jamal.

The opening scenes are masterfully engineered. We get an impression of Forrester before we actually see him, as a shadowy figure watches Jamal from the window of a dilapidated apartment building in the Bronx. On a dare Jamal breaks into the apartment and accidentally leaves a journal that Forrester reads and critiques. Eventually he agrees to help Jamal with his writing, and the friendship between the two has a salutary effect on both of them.

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In other hands the movie might have been unbearably treacly, but Van Sant showed in Good Will Hunting that he has a deft touch with potentially sentimental material. He never pushes the big emotional moments, and his reticence produces some very effective scenes. When Jamal persuades Forrester to accompany him to a basketball game at Madison Square Garden, the two get separated, and Forrester suffers a panic attack. Van Sant doesn't milk the crisis; Forrester's vulnerability comes through all the more poignantly because of the understatement.

These two characters are well drawn and well played, though the film might have done more with the scenes in which Forrester helps to shape and refine Jamal's writing. Still, Connery gives an immensely assured performance, and newcomer Brown is equally affecting. Some of the secondary characters are less believable. Jamal's nemesis is a starchy teacher (played by Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham), who is the epitome of the snobbish, bigoted academic. The idea of making the critic-professor the villainous foe of true creative inspiration is awfully hackneyed, and as this melodrama plays out, it leads to too many canned moments of triumph and heartbreak. Finding Forrester is an exceptionally well made film, but in the end, it settles for predictable platitudes in place of startling insight.

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