It’s really hard to figure out all the cultural features of the movie Forrest Gump. The whole movie is a represent of American culture. In this essay, I will touch on this topic from three aspects. Firstly, I will talk about some points from the view of the national characteristic of Forrest Gump. Each nation has its own films to reflect the social life and national spirit,which are definitely branded by the typical national characteristic. American films, though born of different directors in different times, have something in common: the local features, the characters, the costumes, the languages, the culture, are all typically American. From Forrest Gump we can find that religion plays a vitally important role in the life of American. When Forrest Gump was interviewed by the TV after he came back from China, he said, “In China, they never go to church.” The host was surprised and gave the comment “Hard to imagine.” Actually, in the film, the discussion of the relationship between god and human beings never stops. Gump always believes in god and he believes that he is with god and we can see that god seams to favor Gump particularly. While the relationship between god and Lieutenant Dan is rather awkward, in the war, Lieutenant Dan lost his legs, because of that, he was doubtful about god, and in the storm, he cursed god, but finally, he made his peace with god. That is the reflection of the process“doubt about belief, fight with the belief and then back into belief”. Besides, from the Gump, we can find typical qualities admired by American. For example, optimism, the IQ of Gump is just 75, but he never worries about that, his mother tells him “stupid is as stupid does” and finally he makes a serious of successes. We can also find loyalty, tolerance, and insistence and so on from Gump. Those are what American think highly of. Secondly, we come to the contemporary characteristic of Forrest Gump. Film is rather sensitive about times. From Forrest Gump, we can find many current cultures, which are fully illustrated by Jenny. At that time, counter culture was very popular in America, the youngsters ignore the traditional morality, and they blindly follow the trend. But obviously, American began to reflect this kind of culture; they called for the back of the morality, trying to pick up the traditional values. Gump is the represent of the traditional values, so he is widely accepted and successful.