Finding Forrester: The Man In The Window

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Movies about writers are not very common, since writing by its nature is not really cinematic. “Finding Forrester” bypasses that problem by giving us a man who wrote one good novel a long time ago, and now writes no more: He has turned into a recluse afraid to leave his own apartment. His name is William Forrester, who keeps an eye on his Bronx neighborhood by using binoculars from his upper-floor window. "The man in the window" attracts the attention of black teenagers playing basketball on a court below, and that leads to the turning point in the life of Jamal Wallace.

Jamal is a very intelligent student who has no one to share his intelligence with. At school he obscures his learning because, as an adult observes, "basketball is where he …show more content…
Forrester gives the kid all kinds of useful advice about being a writer, including the insight, "Women will sleep with you if you write a book." That's something Jamal might have figured out for himself, but Forrester is even more encouraging by saying, "women will sleep with you if you write a bad book." Jamal gets a scholarship to a private academy (his SAT is high enough that it's not an athletic scholarship, although the board certainly hopes he'll play). On its faculty is the embittered Crawford, coincidentally an old enemy of Forrester's, who simply doesn't believe an African-American basketball player from the Bronx can write at Jamal's level. That sets up the crisis and the payoff for the movie.

When watching this movie I was reminded of another movie, a great and old one, named "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner". In both that movie and this one, a disadvantaged young man simply refuses to perform like a trained seal, because he knows that will be a lethal blow against his adult tormentors. In a movie where sports supplies an important theme, Jamal's crucial decision supplies the best insight in the story about his journey between two
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