The Pursuit of Happyness

 19 men in pursuit of sadness

A movie is a kind of shadow play and there is a lot hidden in the shadows. For example, the 19 men who had worked at Dean Witter with Chris Gardner (including the one who didn't see the essay question) are left in the shadows. They probably went looking for a room in homeless shelters like the Glide. While we agree that the Smiths win our heart by bringing their off-screen relationship to the screen, we should not forget that the movie is just another advertisement of the great American Dream of hard work and guaranteed success. If hard work brought success to everyone, we wouldn't have half the world worming under the poverty line. But the movie maker is also an artist who has an inner motivation to tell the truth and evidences of him revolting against the movie being a sentimental comedy are explicit. The title of the movie itself gives it away. The hero insists that there should be an I in happiness. Happiness refers only to my happiness and Y (why?) has nothing to do with it. Yeah, sure, ignorance is bliss. Happiness is what I want and why should I think of the 19 others who didn't make it? Losers. We identify easily with the hero because of the perfect characterization and when he tastes success in the end, all our anxieties are over. Well, for the other 19 men, their pursuit of happiness has come to a sad end, at least for now, till they join another rat race. We now find the hero in a different crowd at the end of the scene, among people who are well fed, well dressed, happy. When the lights come on, the wretched faces at the Glide are no longer remembered. Mom didn't leave because of the son; she left because of herself. Hey, Chris, did dad have something to do with that? No? She said you she gave you a baby in return for your false promises and you still went on saying 'it is all right' . The hero himself calls the successful part of his life 'the little part', light at the end of a tunnel. Was his struggle worth it? Does it bring back Christopher's mom? The movie is silent about this. The president urges people to pay their tax. But the hero is in the business of helping people evade it. Only the poor lose it from their petty savings accounts. Chris, for example when he used to be a nobody. Knock knock. Who is there? No answer. The nobody has become somebody and that is how the movie ends. But not all movies lie..... Bicycle Thieves is a 1948 Italian film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to be able to work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi Bartolini. It was given an Academy Honorary Award in 1950, and, just four years after its release, was deemed the greatest film of all time by the magazine Sight & Sound's poll of filmmakers and critics in 1952. The film placed sixth as the greatest ever made in Sight & Sound's latest directors' poll, conducted in 2002, and was ranked in the top 10 of the BBFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14. See the movie for yourself and find out how much of the movie has been copied by “The Pursuit of Happiness without acknowledgement.