You'd be hard-pressed to find an American who doesn't remember Forrest Gump's gumption (and his box of chocolates), savored by whomever ended up sitting next to him on a bus stop bench. That outdoor bench - and its forthright, simply astounding user, played by Tom Hanks in 1994's Forrest Gump - have been etched in both cinematic history and popular culture as symbols of hope, perseverance, and faith.
Other films also have portrayed benches as the starting points for famous stories, including that of young chess prodigy Joshua Waitzkin in 1993's Searching for Bobby Fischer. The boy, played by Max Pomeranc, rose to chess-celebrity status, but not until after he spent hours across a board from park bench chess hustlers in his native New York City.
Still other films take a comic spin on the outdoor bench. Who, for example, could forget the cafe bench that bolstered Meg Ryan, as Sally Albright, while she demonstrated to Billy Crystal, as Harry Burns, how it is for a woman in 1989's When Harry Met Sally? Years later, Ryan and Hanks would take their own laughing turn on a outdoor bench together, discussing a love about which only one of them was sure, in 1998's You've Got Mail. |  |
But indeed, perhaps the most pervasive thought (and image) of the park bench is one of tender love, whether finally realized or always unrequited. Daniel Day-Lewis' Newland Archer, an 1870s lawyer in 1993's The Age of Innocence, poignantly rests on a outdoor bench for a love lost to time and circumstance, for one. But for another two, Julia Roberts' Anna Scott and Hugh Grant's William Thacker in 1999's Notting Hill, love comforts all on a quiet English park bench.
