Film Study #2- The Pursuit of Happyness

Hi all, 

We are on the second movie of our film study. The movie I’ve chosen is called “The Pursuit of Happyness,” which is a film starring Will Smith and his son Jaden.  

Description:     In this movie, an African-American man, abandoned by his father as an infant, vows that he will always be present in the life of his child. Caught in a perfect storm of bad luck, he becomes homeless. However, he manages to take care of his son while pursuing a highly competitive, unpaid internship as a stockbroker. The film was “inspired by” events in the life of Christopher Gardner, who was once homeless. He is now a wealthy stockbroker, as well as a proud father. 

Benefits of the Movie: “The Pursuit of Happyness” shows a homeless African-American father taking responsibility for his child, while succeeding as a stockbroker. It also has excellent messages about the importance of keeping your cool in the face of incredible disappointment and provocation. Time after time, we watch as a the protagonist masters his emotions and comes up gracious and smiling after being dealt a serious blow. As a result, he is often able to go back to the people involved and create an opportunity for himself. 

However, almost everything else about this movie is, in some way, problematic, including its messages about living out your dream and the benefits of hard work. Pointing out the problems and discussing them will lead to valuable lessons about:

• (1) the liberties with the facts that can be taken by filmmakers in a movie “inspired by a true story;” 

• (2) how the movie makers, in search of a dramatic story line, ignored Mr. Gardner’s most important achievement, which was surviving physical and emotional abuse by his stepfather to become a caring and nurturing human being; 

• (3) the victimization of the homeless by criminals; the homeless are at great risk of being assaulted and robbed, but this never made it into the movie; 

• (4) how movies can gloss over troubling ethical questions raised by the true story

During the period that Mr. Gardner pursued the internship program his girlfriend had disappeared and taken his son; Mr. Gardner looked for them but couldn’t find them; after he had passed the broker’s exam and was working as a stockbroker, the girlfriend suddenly appeared and dropped off the boy; Mr. Gardner could have worked for another broker and earned enough money to put a roof over his son’s head but Mr. Gardner wanted to spend his time building his own clientele because this would allow him the chance to become rich faster than if he worked for someone else; working to build his own client base meant that Mr. Gardner wouldn’t be able to afford a place to live for a year or two; faced with a choice of providing a home for his son and putting off his dream of getting rich or being homeless for almost a year while he tried to build his own client base, Mr. Gardner chose to subject his son to the dangers of homelessness; in other words, he put his own interests ahead of his child’s safety;

• and 

(5) how “feel good” movies often feature Cinderella stories of extraordinary good fortune which, given the economic structure of our society, are unrealistic for all but one in a million [in other words, what does the rags to riches story shown in this movie say to a culturally deprived black or hispanic young person growing up in a central city ghetto who has been socially promoted from one grade to the next and who is not a proficient reader?].