Film review:”Finding Forrester”
The film “Finding Forrester” tells about an old man whose life gets a new sense by a young man.
The main characters are a man named William Forrester and the 16-year-old boy Jamal Wallace. Other important persons are Claire Spence, a friend of Jamal and Robert Crawford, Jamal’s teacher.
At the beginning, Jamal is presented living in the Bronx and playing basketball with his friends every day. Next to the basketball field lives a man they don’t know, they call him “the Window”.
The boys tell stories about him that he’s strange and killed a person in the past.
One day Jamal has to do a dare, he has to climb into the flat of the man.
He does and is very interested because he finds a lot of books and readings is his favorite hobby.
When the man comes back Jamal has to leave quickly and forgets his bag.
After a day the bag is falling out of the window, Jamal picks it up from the street. He finds his notebooks, in which he writes every day. Someone has corrected some passages and wrote his opinion about the written words.
The next day Jamal’s teacher tells him that his test scores where excellent and a private school wants him to go there.
Jamal visits this school, but all of the people aren’t that friendly, except of Claire Spence, who shows him around and is very friendly.
These days Jamal visits the flat of the man because he wants to know why the man read his words, which are very private. The man tells him to get off and write 5000 words why he has to stay away.
Jamal does and the next time the man lets him in.
His name is William Forrester and he isn’t very friendly, but Jamal has to visit him again and again.
The same time school isn’t easy going, Robert Crawford, a teacher of Jamal, is unfriendly and puts his students under pressure.
There’s a writing contest and the school wants Jamal to take part in it.
William Forrester, who is a famous author, even he has just written one book, which they are reading in school, tries to help Jamal.
He says to him that he can use his words and after a while he should try to write himself, but no word is allowed to leave the flat.
Jamal doesn’t listen to this advice and gives his text to Mr. Crawford because of the writing contest.
But Mr. Crawford believes it’s a plagiarism, he has a lot of prejudices and thinks Jamal can’t be that clever.
Then they find out that Forrester has written a magazine article, which has the same headline like Jamal’s text and they want him to go to the school court.
Jamal is angry because he thought Forrester had published only his book. On the other side William Forrester is angry because Jamal broke his own word.
They have an argument in which Jamal tells Forrester that he’s just an old man, never leaving the house because he’s fearing other people. Then Jamal leaves.
A few days later, all the students have to read their texts. Immediately, William Forrester gets into the room. Everyone is surprised, also Mr. Crawford. Forrester reads a text and everyone’s listening. When he ends he gets a great applause and Mr. Crawford tells him how wonderful it was. But Forrester only says it wasn’t his text but Jamal’s.
Crawford says it was a great text but he can’t do anything, Jamal has to go to the court. But another teacher tells him to sit down, because it isn’t his case anymore. Than he tells Jamal that he has not to go the court because he wrote his own words and Forrester allowed him to use some of his words.
Forrester and Jamal leave the room together, their friends again. After that they go different ways, but one day a lawyer visits Jamal to tell him about William Forrester’s death because of cancer.. He gives him the key of the flat, in which he can find everything.
The last scene is Jamal sitting in the streets, reading a letter of Forrester.
The film shows how important friendship is and that a huge difference between ages doesn’t mean anything.
Another important topic is the relationship between blacks and whites.
The black people are living in the Bronx, they visit a normal school and have typical hobbies like playing basketball.
If one of them is more intelligent, the white people can’t believe that, they have too many prejudices.
Mr. Crawford plays the role of the typical white man, not accepting the intelligence of a black boy.
But the girl Claire, who falls in love with Jamal, shows that there are more options and that no one is better than the other, only because he’s white.
So this film deals a lot with integrity.
There’s an example at the end of the film, when the head teacher says: “To someone integrity means something!”
I’d enjoyed watching the film because it was nice to see how the relationship between Forrester and Jamal goes on and how Jamal finds his way in the difficult world.
The topic about blacks and whites was shown in a realistic way.
You could identify with Jamal very well how he felt visiting the new school without any of his friends.
The ending was sad when Forrester died and they could never see each other again.
I would watch this film again, because it’s teaching, interesting and in it’s own way kind of cute.
