Sandra K. Friday
Once they have become aware of their relationship to their own "hoods" and to the whole of New Haven, a next logical step will be to focus on something that will take them on an adventure beyond their home turf. We will view the film
Finding Forrester
in which Rob Brown plays a black inner city teen-ager from the Bronx, named Jamal, who conceals from his peers and public school teachers his intellect and his genius for writing, and is recruited to attend a private school in Manhattan and to play on their basketball team. Sound familiar? Jamal's journal falls into the hands of a Pulitzer-prize winning author William Forrester, played by Sean Connery, who also lives in the Bronx, and who has, over the years, become a recluse. Forrester, an agoraphobic, lives in a walk-up, even having his groceries and clothing delivered, so he won't have to face the larger world. As the story unfolds, Forrester gradually becomes a mentor to Jamal, critiquing his writing and helping him overcome racial prejudices he experiences at the private school, while Jamal gradually brings Forrester out of his self-imposed isolation, reintroducing him to Manhattan, and helping him overcome his agoraphobia. The
spaces
in which these two characters live and the
places
in which they
learn
to feel comfortable are good fodder for our study of objective and subjective geography. Here too is an opportunity to explore the assumptions that each character makes about his subjective
space
and what happens when he moves outside of it.
Jamal cracks the
walnut
in which Forrester has chosen to live when, on a dare from his peers, he sneaks into "the window's" (a term the boys use to objectify Forrester whom they do not know) apartment one night, after they think he has gone to bed. Frightened by Forrester, Jamal runs out and leaves his backpack with his journals in it. But before Forrester jumps out and scares Jamal to death, Jamal has the opportunity to see that Forrester has shelves and shelves of books, which, of course, intrigue the writer in Jamal. Forrester critiques the journals and, a few days later, throws them out the window in the backpack. So begins a tempestuous but rich relationship between the aspiring writer and his mentor. Jamal makes a genuine but abortive attempt to get Forrester out of his reclusive environment, but it is Forrester himself who decides to stand up for Jamal at his prejudiced, private, precious school in Manhattan, biking from the Bronx into Manhattan to rescue his young friend from overt prejudice and humiliation when his teacher tries to prove that Jamal could not possibly have written a highly sophisticated, erudite essay that he has submitted in a writing competition. It is Forrester's determination to rescue his protégé, Jamal, that results in Forrester's epiphany that gives him back the world. His assumptions are altered with the size of his world, and as a result, his
space
expands, reaching across an ocean.