 |
| Smilin’
through: the Smiths in The Pursuit of Happyness. |
Fighting
the Good Fight
By
Laura Leon
The
Pursuit of Happyness
Directed
by Gabriele Muccino
In The Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith does more than
battle aliens or defend the world from disaster. He plays
a father, Chris Gardner, striving mightily to keep himself
and his son Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, Will’s
real-life son) out of a black hole of desperation, hopelessness
and insolvency. This is that all-too-rare Hollywood movie
that acknowledges just how perilous life in our society can
be, not just for people already below the poverty line, but
for those of us working to obtain—or maybe just hold onto—a
piece of the American dream. On the surface, The Pursuit
of Happyness is about one man’s quest to reach for the
gold ring; just below its surface, always percolating and
threatening to disturb our sense of ease, is the movie’s real
theme, the delicate balancing act that exists between perceived
success and bankruptcy.
Set in San Francisco in the early ’80s (and inspired by a
20/20 documentary on the real-life Chris Gardner),
the movie begins with Chris’ efforts to unload medical scanners
that he has sunk his and wife Linda’s (Thandie Newton) life
savings into. Unfortunately, the scanners are overpriced and
not recognized as particularly necessary by the scores of
doctors whom Chris courts with an unerring sense of bravado
and good humor. Neither of these attributes do much to hearten
Linda, whose sunken eyes and bony frame suggest way too many
double shifts, cigarettes and sleepless nights spent counting
dunning notices. When Chris decides to try stockbroking, via
an unpaid internship at Dean Witter Reynolds, it’s the last
straw, and Linda heads east to find work in a relative’s restaurant,
leaving Chris in charge of building that career and caring
for their son.
One of the great things about The Pursuit of Happyness,
which was written by Steven Conrad, is how it never lets the
viewer lose sight of things like groceries, rent, bus fare,
day-care bills and overdue taxes. Thrust into an extremely
competitive internship—only one of 20 will be offered a job—Chris
must do nine hours of work in seven in order to pick his son
up from day care. As father and son lose their apartment and
are forced into a homeless shelter, the desperation begins
to mount, and Chris begins to lose some of his overt optimism.
Throughout, he must carry on the charade of normalcy with
his coworkers, who think that the reason Chris is carrying
around a suitcase is because he’s got an out-of-town business
trip. The importance of appearance is vital not just to Chris’s
position at Dean Witter, but also to his own—and to some extent
his son’s—sense of self-worth.
This is sort of a strange film to come around at this time
of year, when we’re usually bombarded with happy-go-lucky
romps or serious arty films vying for Oscar contention. Despite
its title, The Pursuit of Happyness is dark. Like its
title, it is concerned with questions such as, Why is it so
hard to get ahead? Smith is compelling, never once pulling
out what could have been the maudlin notes of a performance,
as if his sole goal is to portray the innate humanity of his
character and, in so doing, remind us all of the humanity
of all such people struggling to keep their heads above water.
And the onscreen chemistry between the two Smiths is nothing
short of perfection, helping to make us feel we’re watching
a documentary as opposed to something merely inspired by a
true story.
Draggin’
Dragon
Eragon
Directed
by Stefen Fangmeier
The well-received fantasy Eragon was written by Christopher
Paolini, a teenager from Montana. With its freshly appreciative
homages to Tolkien, Rowling, and Le Guin, the novel was praised
for its narrative sweep and the believable angst of its titular
young hero. Considering the staid, clumsily paced screen version,
perhaps Paolini should’ve done the adaptation himself—and,
what the hell, directed and starred in it as well. Chances
are his vision would’ve been livelier than Stefen Fangmeier’s.
Despite the promise of his last name (and his résumé as a
visual-effects supervisor), Fangmeier has brought Paolini’s
pages to life with all the verve of a housepainter, simplifying
the story to its most obviously (and boringly) Star Wars-influenced
elements.
Eragon (Edward Speleers) is an orphaned farm boy who finds,
and hatches, a dragon’s egg, propelling him on a quest to
rescue an elf mystic in distress (lovely Sienna Guillory)
and join the outcast resistance to the evil king (John Malkovich)
who oppresses all the land. While his blue-hued baby dragon,
Saphira (voice by Rachel Weisz), is growing into her wings,
Eragon encounters a downtrodden wanderer called Brom (Jeremy
Irons). Brom initiates the youth into the ways of dragon riding,
and tells him of legendary clashes between virtuous dragon
riders and nasty forces such as the creepy-crawly Ra’zacs.
Noticeably meant to be the first installment in a franchise
(Paolini’s follow-up, The Elder, was recently published),
the film drags its feet on Eragon’s humble existence as the
adopted son of a kindly uncle, and then rushes through the
last quarter, frantically introducing characters and locales
to set up future developments.
Eragon’s
pivotal mythos is the relationship between a dragon and its
preordained rider—they can communicate telepathically—but
this bond is rendered mundane by lifelessly clichéd dialogue
and by-the-book fantasy staging. Though the action has its
moments, mainly while Saphira is zipping through cloud cover,
most of it is groaningly familiar, and made even more so by
Speleers’ bland performance. Meanwhile, Weisz’s voicing is
too feminine for what is, in essence, a flying war machine.
Irons, however, has learned a thing or two about world-of-make-believe
ardor since embarrassing himself in the dreck-fest of Dungeons
& Dragons, and creates a semi-interesting character
out of Brom’s Grimm circumstances. This time, it’s Robert
Carlyle’s turn to be brought low by cheesy prosy and churls-gone-wild
costuming. As the king’s “shade,” an undead mage-henchman,
Carlyle comes off like Elrond’s evil drag-queen twin.
—Ann
Morrow
|
Classifieds
