It's becoming harder and harder to think of things that Will Smith can't do

Rating: 9/10 (21 March 2008)

To see Will Smith, one of America's most famous and most highly paid Hollywood movie stars, give such a convincing portrayal of a desperately poor black man struggling to achieve a professional career is a memorable experience indeed. But something comes out of Smith when he really believes in a role he's playing, and you can tell that he really believes in the Chris Gardner story. The movie will always be known as being about the single father in San Francisco who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, as they say, barely surviving after tottering on the brink of poverty. It's about the lowest point in a man's life, and the highest.
It is, however, a story as much about desperation as about determination and heart. I think it might not be very politically correct to say this, but the desperation that gripped Gardner as he watched his life fall apart strikes me as just as much of a determining factor in Gardner's perseverance as his will to succeed. But what we remember is not the desperation or the suffering, it's his determination to provide for his son. Gardner watches his world falling apart, but the way he tries to shield his son from that is some of the best stuff in the film.
At the time we see him, Gardner is a self-employed salesman who has made the dubious decision to invest his family's savings in some bulky and expensive bone-density scanners, which provide only a slightly better picture than a traditional x-ray but are far more expensive. Needless to say, he has trouble unloading them, and things become increasingly difficult for him and his family. Thandie Newton plays his wife in a thoroughly unmemorable role, unlike Smith's real life son Jayden, who is astonishingly well-cast as his on screen son. Jayden nearly steals the show from Will a lot of the time!
I am surprised at how badly the story of Gardner's wife is handled. Maybe the real Gardner didn't want her to be much of the story, since she is not the most uplifting thing. Or maybe he wanted them to present in as real a way as possible what really happened. When Gardner tells her about his unpaid internship at Dean Whitter, she criticizes this as a step backwards and tells him she wants to move to Chicago. He tells her that he's keeping their son and, amazingly, she agrees. At this point her crippling shortcomings as a mother become clear and it's easier for the audience to let her go as she disappears from the movie and her husband's and son's life. Too bad.
I can easily relate to Gardner's troubles in San Francisco. I experienced something similar when I first moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, although not nearly as bad as his experience and with no son. It's difficult to make it in a big American city, especially when you are struggling just to get by, you're constantly behind on all of your bills, and you're surrounded by people driving Porsches and Ferraris. The cars alone in LA are enough to depress you if you're stuck in a dead-end job editing together promotional reels for a product placement company for $10 an hour, trying to work enough to get by while at the same time trying to find a job doing something real. Ouch.
I think the movie's biggest success is that it presents the day to day struggles of Gardner's life, as he smiles and charms his way through his increasingly hectic days at Dean Whitter and then wrestles with desperation at night as he picks up his son from day care and tries to find food and shelter for them when they're evicted from a dingy hotel room of an apartment. The movie approaches the dangerous ground of becoming a tearjerker, but the Smiths save it, both of them nailing their roles with a complex precision that only a real life father and son could.
I've decided to show this movie to my students  I teach at a University in central China, and I'm hoping that if more college students see Gardner's story, it might make them realize that the continuing tension between China and Tibet (which is a separate country in every imaginable way except borders) and the emerging desire to gain Taiwan through war is exactly like Gardner getting that job at Dean Whitter by pulling a gun on the CEO and demanding to be hired.
And by the way, this frightening hope in China to forcibly take Taiwan is no doubt a result of that infamous quote from the murderous and ego-maniacal Mao Tse-tung, "Power comes out of the barrel of a gun." That's probably true, and the Chinese definitely believe it. But peace NEVER comes out of the barrel of a gun. Gardner had to improve himself to become desirable, and I hope that China realizes that they must do the same if there is ever to be peace in Asia
Note: At one point in the movie Smith runs tiredly up a hill chasing a bus while his son trails behind him. Smith claims that he bases that tired, worn-out run on his father, and that it was one of the biggest stretches in the film for him as an actor, because he has always prided himself on how he looks running in his films.