The story is true. It is based on the autobiography of Chris Gardner, a black man who became a successful investor. The film, which is set in the San Francisco of 1981, follows the period of Gardner's life when he struggled to make his way. The story begins with Gardner, portrayed superbly by Will Smith, trying to earn a living selling medical equipment, while his wife (played well by Thandie Newton) is working double shifts at a menial job, and both are trying to raise their son. In a brilliant piece of casting, the son is played by Jaden Smith, Will's son in real life. This gives a special depth to the scenes of father and son.
The film moves rapidly. Equipment sales are rough; Gardner can't pay his bills. Passing by a Dean Witter stock brokerage, he is struck by the smiles on the employees' faces and the Ferrari the manager drives, and he decides that he wants to intern there and move into that line of work. He impresses an executive in a cab (by solving a Rubik's Cube puzzle), is invited for an interview, and manages to talk his way into a slot as an intern — only to find that he will earn no pay for the long training period, and only one of the trainees will eventually be hired as a broker. But he decides to take a shot.
The rest of the movie shows the effort he puts into it. His wife leaves, he goes broke (when the IRS seizes his bank account for trivial back taxes), and he and his son become homeless for a while. The scenes here are very affecting, as he tries to keep his son's spirits up against an incredible string of rough luck. One scene in particular — an episode in which he and his boy are forced to spend the night in a public restroom in a train station — is especially moving.
The humanity and reality of the characters are remarkable. The departing wife is shown as desperate, not bad. The businessmen are hard-driving salesmen, not mean or racist. The only villains are the IRS and the hippies who kept stealing Gardner's medical equipment. The movie depicts a man who is deeply committed to looking after his child, while trying to make it in a tough world.
I will be surprised if Smith doesn't get an Academy Award nomination for his performance, if not the award itself. The portrayal of a black man fighting hard and fighting smart to raise his son and achieve his dreams in a society that allows people to succeed is a deeply satisfying formula. And while the story could easily have become melodramatic, especially given the politically charged problem of homelessness, the director keeps it quick, focused, honest, and leavened with humor.
"The Pursuit of Happyness" is a compelling, energetic, and unabashed celebration of free markets, individual responsibility, and old-fashioned pluck — and it's based on a true story, to boot. Will Smith plays Chris Gardner, a man who never lets up in pursuing his dream of becoming a stockbroker, despite his lack of a college education and the responsibilities of rearing a young son by himself. Against all odds, even homelessness, he manages to land an internship with Dean Witter, study for his SEC exams, and cultivate clients, while feeding his son in soup kitchens and lining up for beds in a homeless shelter each night. As he contemplates the rights set forth by Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, Gardner realizes, "Some people don't get to achieve happiness. They only get to pursue it." Still, he never gives up in his pursuit.
| David T. Beito is an associate
professor of history at the University
of Alabama, and author of Taxpayers in
Revolt and From Mutual Aid to the Welfare
State.
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| While the critics have generally praised the film, it rubbed some of them the wrong way. Jeffrey M. Anderson sees a "disturbing . . . depression era attitude toward the class system. Here, the wealthy are mainly kind, generous folk and the poor are angry and vindictive. Gardner's ambition is admirable, but the movie dimly believes that great wealth is the final answer to all his problems."
Another critic, Peter Sobczynski, cites the film's inattention to "racism, on institutional or individual levels" as an unforgivable lapse. And John Beifuss' summary of the film's message is misleading but equally illustrative of this mindset: "With Reagan hovering in the background as a sort of patron saint of economic self-determination and Captain America as the son's superhero of choice, the movie segregates its characters into two categories: Guitar-strumming hippie chicks, homeless nutcases, Chinese-speaking day care operators and non-Smith black folks — bad; rich white stock brokers with box seats at 49ers games — good."
Frankly, I found it refreshing that the filmmakers chose not to make this a film about racism, but a film about opportunity. True, there is a hint of racism in the fact that Gardner appears to be the only black man in the internship program, and the only intern who is ordered to fetch coffee and donuts for the internship director, Frank (Dan Castellaneta — dig the irony of the voice of Homer Simpson sending out for donuts). But if Gardner suspects he is singled out because of his skin color, he never mentions it. He never whines to his employers about being a single father, either. One of the great points of this story is that, when you are struggling to get ahead, you simply don't have time for whining. Just get the job done, and let someone else worry about saving the world.
A more significant juxtaposition is not between white employers and black employees, but between Gardner and his wife. Both seem to have the same goal: pay the rent, put food on the table, pick their son up from day care. But Linda's solution to their financial woes is to cut back and double up. After dinner she automatically pours their unfinished iced tea back into a shared pitcher before heading to her second shift washing linens in a hotel laundry. Eventually she cracks, unable to see any escape from this never ending cycle of double shifts and recycled tea, and she leaves.
By contrast, Chris knows he will never get out of poverty by working a salaried job for someone else. Gardner is reminiscent of another great black character, Walter Lee Younger of Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." Both men recognize that entrepreneurship is the true path out of the ghetto. Both men fail initially — Gardner spends his family's savings to buy medical equipment that he schlepps from office to office, and Younger risks his family's fortune on a liquor store scheme — but both have the right idea. Find something you feel passionate about, and pursue it relentlessly. Business ownership is the key to financial success, and whether critic Jeffrey Anderson likes it or not, wealth is the solution to poverty.
"The Pursuit of Happyness" is about ideas, and refreshingly subversive ones at that, given the do-gooder philosophy inherent in Hollywood. It promotes the value of individual responsibility and initiative, the idea that the poor can succeed through their own efforts, and that the rich do not accumulate their wealth through exploitation, destructive greed, and racism. It even identifies taxation and inflation as enemies of the common man.
Underlying this free-market philosophy, however, is a film that is unabashedly moving, demonstrating that true happiness does not lie in the accumulation of property alone, but in having someone to share the joy of good fortune. Without someone to tell, someone to care, good fortune is just a pile of paper.
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