Forgotten Classics: The World According to Garp

TS Garp is an odd boy, raised by a nurse named Jenny Fields who basically raped his dad to become pregnant of him. That is to say, she was a nurse at a hospital during WWII when his dad was brought in heavily injured and for some reason he had a constant erection. One night, Jenny, thought to herself: “Hmm, I really want a child, but I don’t really want to be married to someone”. So she climbed on top and rode him until he died. Or just about.

At first she comes across as a very weird woman. Well, she is weird. But she seems even weirder than she is.

I’m not sure how much I should give away here, it’s one of those life-spanning films where a lot of things happen but everything somehow seems relevant (Like The Descendants. You can’t say much about it – A father loses his wife and is dealing with it with his children. Sounds really boring, but it’s not a boring film).

But the film isn’t about his mother, of course. It is about Garp. TS Garp. Technical Sergeant Garp. Because that was the name of his father. Well, not the TS bit but Jenny still decided to give his son his father’s name.

One thing I can say though, Jenny is obsessed with lust (which she uses interchangeably with sex). She finds it filthy. And disgusting. But in the end she decides that her son lusts and has his needs. And out comes a remarkably modern lady.

Garp decides he wants to become a writer because her high school sweetheart wants to marry a writer. At first his mother is not really pleased with this turn of events but it does plant a seed of interest in her mind.

And then she writes a book called A Sexual Suspect, which is a semi-biographical novel about a woman who doesn’t want to get married and decides to raise a child on her own. The book becomes an instant success overnight and Jenny suddenly sees herself as a feminist icon.

The film heavily revolves around sex, but not in an overt way.

Early in the film, when Garp is still a kid, a female friend of his starts telling him how babies are made. She obviously having heard her parents argue about it, says it all begins with the woman saying she has a headache and can’t be bothered that night. That goes on for a bit but in the end the man lies on top of the woman and rips her clothes off.

Later in the film, Garp marries his high school sweet heart, but they have a hard time being faithful to one another which ends in… well, I can’t tell you (I don’t want to give the whole thing away).

It’s hard to say more without giving too much away. But this film is good. It is a classic. And it is one of my favourites. I remember seeing it first when I was a teenager. I was amazed to see Robin Williams in this serious role, where he was not hopping about being funny. It made me see him in a completely new light (I saw it before I saw Good Will Hunting).

The World According to Garp is based on an 1978 novel by John Irving. The film was made in 1982, in the days before Robin Williams became a gorilla and Glenn Close became a man and was directed by the late George Roy Hill (of Slaughterhouse Five and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fame). In fact, this was Close’s first feature film and one of Williams’ first as well.

It seems that the story is based, at least partly, on Irving’s life, since his mother was not married when she got pregnant of him and he never new his biological father.

This is a straightforward film. No CGI or anything of the sort, it is just a film about the peculiar life of a mother and a son. A mother who just happens to be a feminist. And a son who has a slightly different view on life because of the way his mother raised him.

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Read about Filmophilia’s other Forgotten Classics. There are plenty of them.