The Pursuit of Happyness

Well, it's 'Happiness Happens' month and what more to write about than happiness? Behold everyone, for Gabriele Muccino brings to the big screen an Oscar-worthy Hollywood heartwarmer that guarantees buckets of tears and painful arrows at your heart during the pursuit of something so treasured, so foraged for and few ever manage to get – happiness. Starring Will Smith, Thandie Newton and Jaden Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) is sure to get everyone looking down in the dumps.

San Francisco, 1981: Chris Gardner is a salesman selling bone density scanners, which are marginally better than the current technology for double the price. Gifted with an amazing intelligence, persistence and diligence and an innate talent for selling, Gardner strives for a better career path and finally gets selected for an internship program at a prestigious brokerage firm that, however, provides no salary and will select only one of the twenty interns. Meanwhile, his financial situation grows weaker:  his wife leaves him, he is evicted from his apartment for not paying rent, loses the money in his bank account to the tax collector and is finally forced into the streets with his 5-year-old son, Christopher, and a broken bone density scanner (which could get them food for a month) and winds up sleeping in a subway restroom. How Gardner survives the ranks of the homeless (if not the hopeless) with his 5-year-old while competing with Ivy Leaguers for a position in an esteemed brokerage firm with nothing but dignity, resolve, faith, love, independence and a lighthouse of an optimism carves the rest of the story.

The Pursuit of Happyness deals with the constitutional right to ‘pursue’ happiness rather than the right to be happy. This time, Will Smith took on a new look in this movie: energetic, sincere, optimistic and loving as opposed to his action-flicks or slapstick comedy. He was exceptionally expressive – throughout the movie, he fervently maintained an optimistic, resolving, undefeated attitude that in one scene, when he can’t stand it anymore and breaks down, you truly feel anguished. And Jaden Smith (Will’s own son) was so endearing, he charmed Will Smith off the screen. His acting was perfect, especially after considering how contrary it is to Jaden Smith’s own life. The bond between Chris Gardner and Christopher comes very naturally, probably because it is real too. The climactic scene was very powerful, I felt, with absolutely truthful lines and flawless acting by Will Smith as he quivers with delight and content, a storm of happiness raging his face towards the end. Thandie Newton also put on a convincing act and effectively made me loathe her. Will Smith pestering a cleaner to correct the spelling of ‘happyness’ (hence the movie’s name) outside his child’s day-care centre, a homeless man assuming one of the bone density scanners to be a time machine, Will Smith running during most parts of the movie to retrieve a stolen scanner and Christopher’s adorable knock-knock jokes certainly adds some chuckles to an otherwise gut-wrenching movie. Unexpectedly, the movie wasn’t too cheesy and the technical aspects of the movie were just seamless: from the clothes to the lighting to the guitar-playing hippies.

On the contrary, there were a few downsides to the film – I found the story a bit clichéd and the ending quite predictable – all movies end favouring the protagonist of course. An ostensible amount of time was spent seeing Will Smith chasing thieves who stole the scanners. The movie wasn’t captivating plot-wise too, which is why the actors were needed to add some colour to an otherwise unadorned, transparent movie of raw emotion and truth. Chris Gardner’s pursuit for happiness seems to be tightly interwoven with the pursuit for money – he did not only want a simple home to start with; he wanted luxurious mansions and sports cars too. I could see that Chris Gardner was too short-sighted: he assumes that only riches bring you happiness, forgetting that his own son does more than that. At one point, he thinks, “They [the stock brokerage employees] all looked so happy. Why couldn’t I look like that?”

This movie is a very moving, poignant portrayal of hard times, when all there is left is to smile, hope and have a when-life-gives-you-lemons-make-lemonade attitude. I would say this rags-to-riches tale is truly worth a watch. “When people can’t do something themselves, they’re going to tell you that you can’t do it,” says Will Smith, which is, beyond any doubt, the blatant truth.