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Cinema
The Pursuit of
Happyness
A review by
Yamini Ayyagari
 Based on
the real life story of
Chris Gardner, the Pursuit of Happyness looks at the crests and troughs in Chris' life
on his way to becoming a stock broker, and eventually as everyone knows, a
multi-millionaire.
Will Smith played the role of Chris Gardner while Smith's son, Jaden
Smith played Gardner's 7 or 8-year-old son.
At one level, even though the movie is titled The
Pursuit of Happyness (deliberately spelt wrong), it is pretty
depressing. Yes, the movie is supposed to focus on the struggles of the main
protagonist as he chases what seems like a chimerical dream. However, every
time you think that things are gonna get better, they only get even worse
for Chris. As Chris and his son move from one slump to another, you begin to
wonder is there truly light at the end of the tunnel for this man?
The movie starts off with Chris desperately trying to sell, with not too
much luck, a bone density monitoring system. Every hospital he approaches
does not seem to find a need for such a system. But at different stages in
the movie, I did find it strange that, when things start going really really
wrong, and when you know he needs to dig deep to find a way out, Chris does
manage to sell that very system to different doctors, even as he is trying
to do his best at an unpaid internship at Dean Whitter brokerage firm, and
also struggling to find a place to stay at night for himself and his son.
So, initially, couldn't he sell it because he didn't try hard enough or
because he knew that even if he didn't sell it there was a way out with his
wife doing two shifts at work?
It seems even weirder because the movie seems to focus on the strength of
trying despite failures, on Chris' unwavering perseverance and
determination. Two scenes in the movie actually reflect this very well:
first, when Chris gets a chance to impress his future employer, in 10 to 20
minutes on a cab ride. As the cab races to the destination, Chris struggles
with the Rubik's cube, turning it round and round desperately. The urgency
in his moves is well-captured, for he knows he had to get it right, for this
journey on the cab could well be a ticket to the journey of his life itself.
To me that scene in the cab summed up the movie - try, try and try again.
You have to determine all the moves for yourself and you have to get it
right. That is how one pursues happiness, and Chris' life is a testimony to
that.
All this is voiced in one way or other when Chris talks to his son in the
movie. In one scene when Chris is playing basketball with his son, he says
he never made it as a basketball player and his son wouldn't make it too.
And just immediately after, he tells the kid, "Don’t ever let someone tell
you, you can’t do something. Not even me." Or at another time he says, "You
got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves,
they wanna tell you that you can’t do it. You want something? Go get it.
Gardner". And that's what Chris does - he gets out there, works himself out
and makes it - really makes it, giving hope to a lot of others like him.
I also found a lot of similarities between The Pursuit of Happyness
and the Indian flick Guru. Even if they seem to be set in times
separated by decades and in locations separated by the seven seas, at one
level both Chris Gardner and Gurukant Desai are about the same thing - about
breaking the shackles of poverty, about pursuing one's dreams, about making
a lot of money, and about succeeding in life. In one of the early scenes in
the Indian movie, his father tells Guru to be realistic, to stop chasing
dreams because dreams never become a reality. There is a context to this
statement - Guru's father believes so because he himself had never succeeded
when he acted on his own ambitions and dreams, and hence he believes no one
can. Something very similar to what Chris' says in the movie - "People can't
do something themselves, they wanna tell you that you can't do it." Chris
breaks law too even though they may seem minor in comparison to what Guru
does - not paying his tickets, not paying the cab driver, sleeping in public
toilets etc. But what redeems this man is his extreme love for his son -
that indeed is one of the most touching dimensions of the movie.
In both the movies though there is one aspect that just doesn't seem to work
for me - for both Chris and Guru the pursuit of happiness is in making it,
success was in building business empires, in becoming multi-millionaires.
While I understand that without money to cover the basic needs in life,
happiness is indeed elusive, this all out emphasis on money and more money
is something I can't relate to. But then that is me.
Even though it is painful to watch, The Pursuit of Happyness is worth
a dekko. You will get out of the theatre feeling good and hopeful.
April 28,
2007
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