The Pursuit of Happyness

Only fools laugh at Horatio Alger and his poor boys who make good. The wise man who thinks twice about that sterling author will realize that Alger is to America what Homer was to the Greeks.
--Nathanael West

There was a pretty big disconnect for me between the advertising for this movie and the experience of watching it. For one thing, despite all the trappings of a supposed feel good Horatio Alger tale, one would have to be pretty oblivious to what can only be described as the utter panic running throughout nearly every scene. And secondly, one would have to ignore the (admittedly subtle) message that the division between wealth and poverty, success and failurere, and happiness or misery is precariously narrow. One of the opening shots of the film makes this abundantly clear by simply panning downward from the upwardly mobile heads and shoulders of the working elite to a homeless man passsed out on the side walk. A visual representation not only of the dreadful possibilities that keep those people working, but of the short distance one would have to fall to be there too.

So, to put it simply, I don't see the film as a celebration of American capitalism (nor, interestingly, a condemnation of it) but instead a sort of examination of what American capitalism feels like on the ground, from the point of view of those who are sold those dreams of success. You can take from this movie just about any political viewpoint you bring into it, which is to say it's not particularly interesting as a political film.

It's most powerful aspect, for me, comes from the basic clarity of the story: survive or perish. It's a parallel version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road with a happy ending, simply a father and son fighting for survival. Even the big speech from the trailers isn't as sappy as it appears, since the context in which it is delivered only serves to make our hero more human--it stems from his failures as father. If there's a sadder and more terrifying scene in a Hollywood movie than Will Smith crying in a public restroom, clutching his sleeping son and holding the door shut with his foot, then I'll be shocked.

When the Levees Broke



Probably the greatest sin of Spike Lee's masterful documentary is too often mistaking provocation for enlightenment. Kanye West's seemingly bold proclamation that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" may well be a daring political statement, especially considering it was delivered in a typically bland "we care about you" bullshitathon from Hollywood, but it collapses under the weight of the importance assigned to it. The fact is it merely repeats the same personalization of racial inequality that manages to obscure the real institutional, social, economic, and cultural factors that really contribute to the problem. It may even be true that George Bush doesn't care about black people, but that wouldn't tell us much about why or how Katrina (and the real issue: the desperate poverty in New Orleans) really happened. With these sorts of spokesmen, and the demagogic use to which they put the rage that they whip up at ineffectual targets, we're merely left celebrating the acquittal of O.J. Simpson as if it struck a blow for racial equality.

With that issue put aside, what's remarkable about the film in political terms is how little it resorts to the tactics described above. In one memorable section, Lee entertains and then debunks a conspiracy theory, only to provide a historical context that only raises the question yet again. The suggestion, it seems to me, is not so much the endorsement of "George Bush doesn't care about black people" or the theory that the government blew up the dam to protect the rich white neighborhoods of New Orleans, but instead the discouraging fact that these feelings still linger, that our past sins tend to revisit us. The seemingly wild conspiracy theories don't seem so wild (though still far-fetched) when we are forced to face our past transgressions. Suspicion is the lingering weight of the sin that we carry in this country.

Beyond all this, the film is most remarkable as a work of art, an ode to New Orleans, the South, Music, and African American culture. It's also a eulogy for the Utopian aspirations of that city, and a document to the legacy of Reconstruction in the South. It's a sad testament to meaningless mass death, made more ignoble by the anonymity of poverty. So many bodies left unattended, face down in the water. An army of nameless dead.

It's an angry film. It's a "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" for our time. A sermon which posits Hurricane Katrina not as cleansing baptismal waters but as a deluge come to wash away the false veneers we maintain about our culture. Fittingly, Lee seems to see Katrina as a critical moment for us to examine ourselves and see that the sins in the past of this country will not wash away so easily. No, it will take work.

Casino Royale


I don't very much about Bond movies. Just putting that out there. I don't really like them. The formula (gadgets, nice car, hot babe who is possibly a femme fatale, exotic locales) is nice once or twice, but it seems to sap the joy of surprise out of the films. Ultimately, the movies seem to blend into each other, offering infinite variation which only serves to underline their basic sameness.

I like this movie a lot. It starts out really great. A black and white scene which imagines Bond as a nearly sociopathic killer (exactly the type of man you expect your government to actually put to good use) and even gives the audience credit enough to fill in an unfinished line for the joke. Pretty bold really.

But eventually it reverts back to a "Bond" film and gets progressively more boring and predictable but thankfully it ends in time to preserve it from getting plain boring.