Silence In Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump, directed by Robert Zemeckis shows the integration of a pop soundtrack, but not a complete abandonment of the traditional orchestrated score. The pop soundtrack consisted of a medley of sixties hits, mostly of which the soldiers in Vietnam would have listened to on the radio. The orchestrated soundtrack by Alan Silvestri was mostly light strings and piano. Additionally, complete silence was used to add drama to scenes, establishing a symbol of silence for Forrest as a character. The combination of the three accurately conveyed the swinging emotions throughout the entire movie. Silence was used with precision to create dramatic effects in the movie. The silence when Forrest ran away from the bullies contributed to the tenseness

However, when there would be drama or fear in a scene, the music would die down, and use silence to cue the feelings. The silence added intensity to the scene, along with Forrest’s whispering storytelling makes the viewer feel as if they are experiencing the fear in the scene themselves. Likewise, Forrest’s general silence, with short but poignant comments gave a motif to the movie. With the music cutting out, or heavily fading out right before one of his comments, the importance of his few words are highlighted. When Forret stopped running, there was nearly ten seconds of silence, making the viewer think that he would say something heavily important. Then, his line was much more prominent then just having the same songs play as when he was running. The contrast of music to silence plays a predominant role in the

Even though Back to the Future featured a much louder and dramatic soundtrack, the blending of the two were very similar. Both featured a traditional orchestrated score with contrast to a pop compilation soundtrack. In Back to the Future, some of the songs were originally written for the movie, yet featured the same style, of when the movie was filmed. Furthermore, the style of combination between soundtrack and songs, and similar sounding riffs denote the similarities of both of Silvestri’s compositions. The theme from the third Back to the Future movie had many similar riffs and general sound to “Run Forrest Run.” Both played off of the Midwestern aspects of the movie, and the importance of the