The Pursuit of Happiness  or the happiness of pursuit

Rating: 10/10 (23 February 2008)

(Karthik Narayan)
My good friend joked, "Is it the pursuit of happiness or the happiness of pursuit?" Well you never know what happiness is... Two songs that come to my mind are: "It's all about the Money" by Meja and "Ka ching" by Shania Twain. Though both songs have different perspectives, the idea is simple  is money happiness?
How can you find happiness in a place that can't even spell it right?  Chris Gardener just opened up my mind to the question of what happiness is. I managed to ask a few people just to get vague answers like  what you like vs. what you get is matched and the result is happiness or otherwise.
Is money happiness? Is fame happiness? Is glory happiness? Is being able to match wits with the best minds in the world happiness? Is merit happiness? So many questions with no answers.
But then I remember the opening lines of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) which reads  "This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
So in the hope that this movie would help me find the answer, I sat through the troubles of Chris Gardener (Will Smith) and his cute son (his real life son). What I saw was the hardship of poverty; how in spite of not being able to make ends meet, a person can come out and win in life. And most importantly, how society looks so happy when you are not able to even understand what it means to be so.
Life is like bending a steel bar. A steel bar is so rigid that you need to exert yourself to try and bend it. Happiness is the result of hard work. When the attempt to bend blends with a positive result, we would become happy. But happiness doesn't end with bending one bar.
There is no recipe for happiness. It is not just an emotion  it is the purpose of life. Why do we pursue happiness  to complete our otherwise incomplete life? Why do we live? It is not to wait for death, but to bring joy into the lives of many people including ours.
Will Smith continues to impress many of us in this movie. The movie isn't a blockbuster because it was full of violence, abuse, expletives  the theme is simple; the actors are simple. Sans heavy makeup that make them handsome.
Will Smith's transition from a cool guy to an actor who can taste and display emotions of normal people is groovy.
There are some instances when you don't know whether to laugh or to cry  these provide comic relief from the otherwise serious turn of events in the movie.
The message is simple  have dreams, never give up and follow those dreams; you will get to where you want to be.
This movie will provide you happiness when you find the DVD and after you are finished watching it, a smile that says it all.
How this missed getting into the Top 250 movies of all time is a wonder! More miracles, such good acting went unnoticed at the place where they gave away awards for so called "Bests" of the year 2006.