I read one critic compare to The Pursuit of Happyness to Rocky. I think it’s closer to the Bicycle Thief, that 1948 staple of Italian Neorealism in which a man and his son search high and low through the streets of Rome to retrieve his stolen bicycle so that he can keep his job which he needs to support his family in postwar Italy. However, there is one main separation existing between the two. Ricci, the hero of the Bicycle Thief ends with less than Chris Gardener does in the Pursuit of Happyness, but you can’t help feeling as though it is Ricci who is left with the most wealth in the closing shot.

The Pursuit of Happyness is based on the true story of a Chris Gardener (Will Smith) who lives in 1981 San Francisco under the roof of a shabby apartment with his wife and son. His wife (Thandie Newton) works double shifts in order to bring the most minimal of support the family needs, while Chris spends his days trying to sell overpriced medical equipment to hospitals and look after his son Christopher (Smith’s real-life son Jaden). The family is barely held together as neither parent makes enough income to afford rent, payments on withstanding parking tickets and to send their son to a daycare centre in which the children study episodes of the Loveboat. I wonder if religion revolves around Charlie’s Angels.

One day, while pursuing his useless endeavors, Gardener sees a man getting out of a very nice car. He wonders what the man does. The man is a stockbroker for a company called Dean Witter. “You must have went to school for a long time to do that?” Chris asks. Nope, turns out all you need to be a stockbroker is a good handle on math and good people skills.

Being at the top of his math class when he was younger and an all around likable guy, Chris gets the idea to apply for an internship at Dean Witter. But his wife, becoming frustrated with constantly needing to scrape by, takes an opportunity to move to New York for a waitressing job, leaving Chris and Christopher behind.

To make matters worse, Chris beats the competition (only twenty are accepted) and gains entry to Dean Witter as an intern, only to find out that the position offers no salary and in the end only one of the twenty will be selected to become a stockbroker. Thus Chris is forced to continue selling his machines while trying to do the best at his job in less time than the other interns so that he can take care of his son. This takes Chris on a sad journey as he is evicted from apartments and hotel rooms, finds refuge and food in homeless shelters, and in one sad and amazing scene, convinces his son that they have traveled back to the prehistoric age and must sleep in a cave (the floor of a subway station bathroom) in order to protect themselves from dinosaurs.

What is most remarkable about the Pursuit of Happyness is its old fashion heart and execution. It is a simple moral study of one man who is struggling to come up from nothing in order to set an example for his son. A film like this depends on the strength of it’s leading actor. In the hands of Will Smith, Chris Gardener is human; both idyllic and fallible. He is a man who has done nothing to deserve his circumstances and who works towards an idea of the American Dream, not because he needs money, but because he wants anything other than nothing for himself and his son. These are not easy notes to play, to be both vulnerable and indestructible at the same time, but Smith achieves them through a delicate balancing act, never allowing himself to become larger than the story but always being larger than his circumstances. This is Will Smith’s most compete performance.

Not only that, but it is a rare film which presents a strong father figure. We are so used to dad being the villain in Hollywood that it is a little jarring to see a man who will do anything to be a strong role model for his son. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something.” Chris tells Christopher. “Not even me.” I believe it to have been a wise decision to cast Jaden Smith in the role of Christopher. Being the real-life son of Will, the two share a bond which cannot be faked. There is a delicate back-and-forth that exists between the two that only a father and his son could posses. Chris hates putting his son through such misery, but in a way it is Christopher’s youthful innocence and understanding that gets Chris up every morning.

It may be ironic, but on the day I saw the Pursuit of Happyness, I has also just finished reading Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel Requiem for a Dream. In it, 4 characters, 3 heroine addicts and one who gets hooked on diet pills get caught up in their journey toward the American Dream which inevitably destroys them. In the forward of the book Selby states, “I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because life is giving, not getting.”

As cynical as it may sound, I understand what Selby is saying. Chris Gardener may be a good father when we leave him but will he be just as loving and nurturing when he gets wrapped up in the world of office politics? Who will pick Christopher up from daycare or see him to bed when Chris needs to put in those extra hours for an upcoming promotion? The truth is, to many, success in America has nothing to do with chasing dreams; few successful people will ever have the luxury to produce a feature film about themselves and are probably content with that. Still, the Pursuit of Happyness ended with a round of applause from a theater full of people of all ages. I can understand why. The film keeps us in the moment, showing us such an intimate portrait of a good man just trying to catch a break for both him and his son that we get to thinking: if anyone should make it, Chris Gardener should.