Review: The Pursuit of Happyness

When I was going though the film, the thing that struck me the most was the "pursuit"-in the literal sense of the word. In order of their appearance, he first of all pursued the hippy girl for his scanner without success, then caught her another day and got it back; then he was pursued by the cab driver, lost his second scanner in catching the subway; the third time, he got out of the detention house and made a mad run for his interview, then tried to catch the bum in vain but got hit by a car and lost a shoe; the fourth time, missed an appointment despite of the mad pursuit and at last, retrieved his device from the bum... Though sometimes it is not clear whether he is pursuing happiness or being pursued by life.

But when I look back and check all the pursuing scenes out, I find they don't really make up the bulk of the film as they appear to be, I have to skip long intervals to find out these clues, but they give me an impression much more stronger than the rest of the film partly because they constantly remind me that the road to happiness is a pursuit, not waiting, not casual searching, but a mad pursuit.

Sometimes life puts you on the verge of collapsing. You are on the fringe that if you let go, it hardly can get any worse, everything (dream, talent, honor, potential...) then drifts away like they never existed, and if you run and scramble and snatch and hang on long enough until hope looms from the horizon, miracles do happen.

What is in Chris Gardner that made him pull through is not some strongly manifested determination, or faith of any kind, nor do i think the word "optimism" is the highlight of his character. It is his underlying persistence in refusing to be blown into the mindset of sloth, of letting go. That is so strong that he never even shows any inclination of giving up. Otherwise none of the above listed pursuits will happen- he could just lie down and accept, saying "Good riddance", "that's life" or "tomorrow is another day." I believe this very character is the fountainhead of his life's pursuit of happiness and also one of the core messages that the film wants to get across.

Then there is the question as old as mankind-happiness. Though we all expect it to happen in the end-the typical rags-to-riches success- when the moment comes, it never fail to fill our eyes with tears. Somewhere near the end of the story Chris says "...my constant disappointment in my ten-gallon head...because when i was young and getting A in history tests or something, whatever, i got this good feeling about all the things that i would be, and then i never became any of them." And then fast forward to the ending - this is a story of a dream lost and found, and the very moment of reunion with our long-lost dream is the "little part" of happiness. We break in tears at this point because this is something we all share.

In addition, somehow I feel this film is partly inspired by another movie Lola Rennt, or Run Lola Run. One thing is about the running and rushing scenes. Another is that the bum in The Pursuit of Happiness very much resembles the one in that German film. And i come to the conclusion that if you lose something important in public place, it is almost always taken away by a lucky bum, and you can always take it back.