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.