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The Pursuit Of Happyness

A fairy tale in realist drag, “The Pursuit of Happyness” is the kind of entertainment that goes down smoothly until it gets stuck in your craw. Inspired by a true story, as they like to say in Hollywood, the film traces the fleeting ups and frightening downs of Chris Gardner, whose efforts to keep his family from sinking into poverty evolve into a life-and-death struggle of social Darwinian proportions. It’s the early 1980s, and while Ronald Reagan is delivering the bad economic news on television, Chris is about to prove you don’t need an army to fight the war on poverty, just big smiles and smarts, and really sturdy shoes. (It also helps that the star playing him is as innately sympathetic as Will Smith.)

Given how often Chris breaks into a run on the streets of San Francisco, it’s a good thing his shoes are well built; his lungs, too. Written by Steven Conrad and directed by Gabriele Muccino, “The Pursuit of Happyness” recounts how Chris, plagued by some bad luck, a few stupid moves and a shrew for a wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), loses his apartment and, with his 5-year-old, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, Mr. Smith’s own beautiful son), joins the ranks of the homeless, if not the hopeless. Evicted from the mainstream and bounced from shelter to shelter, Chris holds firm to his dignity, resolve, faith, love and independence. His optimism sweeps through the film like a searchlight, scattering clouds and dark thoughts to the wind.

It’s the same old bootstraps story, an American dream artfully told, skillfully sold. To that calculated end, the filmmaking is seamless, unadorned, transparent, the better to serve Mr. Smith’s warm expressiveness. That warmth feels truthful, as does the walk-up apartment Chris’s family lives in at the start of the film, which looks like the real paycheck-to-paycheck deal. As does the day care center, which is so crummy it can’t even get happiness right (hence the title).

This is no small thing, considering the film industry’s usual skewed sense of economic class, a perspective encapsulated by the insider who described the middle-class family in “Little Miss Sunshine” to me as working class, perhaps because the mother drives a gently distressed Miata rather than next year’s Mercedes.

Money matters in “The Pursuit of Happyness,” as it does in life. But it matters more openly in this film than it does in most Hollywood stories that set their sights on the poor, largely because Chris’s pursuit of happiness eventually becomes interchangeable with his pursuit of money. He doesn’t want just a better, more secure life for himself and his child; either by scripted design or by the example of the real Chris Gardner, he seems to yearn for a life of luxury, stadium box seats and the kind of sports car he stops to admire in one scene. His desires aren’t just upwardly mobile; they’re materialistically unbound. Instead of a nice starter home, he (and the filmmakers) ogles mansions. It’s no wonder he hopes to become a stockbroker.

That may sound like a punch line, at least to some ears, but it’s the holy grail in “The Pursuit of Happyness.” A self-starter, Chris has sunk all of the family’s money into costly medical scanners that he tries to sell to doctors and hospitals. But the machines are overpriced, and the sure thing he banked on has landed them in debt. Forced to work two shifts at a dead-end job, Linda angrily smolders and then rages at Chris, which seems reasonable since he has gambled all of their savings on an exceptionally foolish enterprise. (And, unlike her, he hasn’t signed up for overtime.) But this is a film about father love, not mother love, and Linda soon leaves the picture in a cloud of cigarette smoke and a storm of tears.

Chris and the filmmakers seem happy to see her go, but life only gets tougher once she and her paychecks disappear. Much of the film involves Chris’s subsequent efforts to keep himself and his child housed and fed while he is enrolled in an unpaid internship program at a powerful stock brokerage firm. Bright and ferociously determined, Chris easily slides into this fantastical world of shouting men, ringing phones, gleaming surfaces and benevolent bosses. He goes along to get along, and when one of his bosses asks for money to pay for a cab, he quickly opens his wallet. Chris himself stiffs another working man for some money because that wallet is so light. But this is a film about him, not the other guy.

How you respond to this man’s moving story may depend on whether you find Mr. Smith’s and his son’s performances so overwhelmingly winning that you buy the idea that poverty is a function of bad luck and bad choices, and success the result of heroic toil and dreams. Both performances are certainly likable in the extreme, though Mr. Smith shined brighter and was given much more to do when he played the title character in Michael Mann’s underrated “Ali.” That film proves an interesting comparison with this one, not in filmmaking terms, but in its vision of what it means to be a black man struggling in America. In one, a black man fights his way to the top with his fists; in the other, he gets there with a smile.

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The Shawshank Redemption

"The Shawshank Redemption" is a movie about time, patience and loyalty -- not admirable qualities, perhaps, but they grow on you during the subterranean progress of this story, which is about how two men serving life sentences in prison become friends and find a way to fight off despair.

The story is narrated by "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), who has been inside the walls of Shawshank Prison for a very long time and is its leading entrepreneur. He can get you whatever you need: cigarettes, candy, even a little rock pick like an amateur geologist might use. One day he and his fellow inmates watch the latest busload of prisoners unload, and they make bets on who will cry during their first night in prison, and who will not. Red bets on a tall, lanky guy named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who looks like a babe in the woods.

But Andy does not cry, and Red loses the cigarettes he wagered. Andy turns out to be a surprise to everyone in Shawshank, because within him is such a powerful reservoir of determination and strength that nothing seems to break him. Andy was a banker on the outside, and he's in for murder. He's apparently innocent, and there are all sorts of details involving his case, but after a while they take on a kind of unreality; all that counts inside prison is its own society -- who is strong, who is not -- and the measured passage of time.

Red is also a lifer. From time to time, measuring the decades, he goes up in front of the parole board, and they measure the length of his term (20 years, 30 years) and ask him if he thinks he has been rehabilitated. Oh, most surely, yes, he replies; but the fire goes out of his assurances as the years march past, and there is the sense that he has been institutionalized -- that, like another old lifer who kills himself after being paroled, he can no longer really envision life on the outside.

Red's narration of the story allows him to speak for all of the prisoners, who sense a fortitude and integrity in Andy that survives the years. Andy will not kiss butt. He will not back down. But he is not violent, just formidably sure of himself. For the warden (Bob Gunton), he is both a challenge and a resource; Andy knows all about bookkeeping and tax preparation, and before long he's been moved out of his prison job in the library and assigned to the warden's office, where he sits behind an adding machine and keeps tabs on the warden's ill-gotten gains. His fame spreads, and eventually he's doing the taxes and pension plans for most of the officials of the local prison system.

There are key moments in the film, as when Andy uses his clout to get some cold beers for his friends who are working on a roofing job. Or when he befriends the old prison librarian (James Whitmore). Or when he oversteps his boundaries and is thrown into solitary confinement. What quietly amazes everyone in the prison -- and us, too -- is the way he accepts the good and the bad as all part of some larger pattern than only he can fully see.

The partnership between the characters played by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman is crucial to the way the story unfolds. This is not a "prison drama" in any conventional sense of the word. It is not about violence, riots or melodrama. The word "redemption" is in the title for a reason. The movie is based on a story, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, by Stephen King, which is quite unlike most of King's work. The horror here is not of the supernatural kind, but of the sort that flows from the realization than 10, 20, 30 years of a man's life have unreeled in the same unchanging daily prison routine.

The director, Frank Darabont, paints the prison in drab grays and shadows, so that when key events do occur, they seem to have a life of their own.

Andy, as played by Robbins, keeps his thoughts to himself. Red, as Freeman plays him, is therefore a crucial element in the story: His close observation of this man, down through the years, provides the way we monitor changes and track the measure of his influence on those around him. And all the time there is something else happening, hidden and secret, which is revealed only at the end.

"The Shawshank Redemption" is not a depressing story, although I may have made it sound that way. There is a lot of life and humor in it, and warmth in the friendship that builds up between Andy and Red. There is even excitement and suspense, although not when we expect it. But mostly the film is an allegory about holding onto a sense of personal worth, despite everything. If the film is perhaps a little slow in its middle passages, maybe that is part of the idea, too, to give us a sense of the leaden passage of time, before the glory of the final redemption.

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The Story of An Hour

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

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The Dark Brown Dog

A Child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulder  against a high board-fence and swayed the other to and fro, the while  kicking carelessly at the gravel.

Sunshine beat upon the cobbles,  and a lazy summer wind raised yellow dust which trailed in clouds down  the avenue. Clattering trucks moved with indistinctness through it. The  child stood dreamily gazing.

After a time, a little dark-brown dog  came trotting with an intent air down the sidewalk. A short rope was  dragging from his neck. Occasionally he trod upon the end of it and  stumbled.

He stopped opposite the child, and the two regarded each  other. The dog hesitated for a moment, but presently he made some  little advances with his tail. The child put out his hand and called  him. In an apologetic manner the dog came close, and the two had an  interchange of friendly pattings and waggles. The dog became more  enthusiastic with each moment of the interview, until with his gleeful  caperings he threatened to overturn the child. Whereupon the child  lifted his hand and struck the dog a blow upon the head.

This  thing seemed to overpower and astonish the little dark-brown dog, and  wounded him to the heart. He sank down in despair at the child's feet.  When the blow was repeated, together with an admonition in childish  sentences, he turned over upon his back, and held his paws in a peculiar  manner. At the same time with his ears and his eyes he offered a small  prayer to the child.

He looked so comical on his back, and holding his paws peculiarly,  that the child was greatly amused and gave him little taps repeatedly,  to keep him so. But the little dark-brown dog took this chastisement in  the most serious way, and no doubt considered that he had committed some  grave crime, for he wriggled contritely and showed his repentance in  every way that was in his power. He pleaded with the child and  petitioned him, and offered more prayers.

At last the child grew   weary of this amusement and turned toward home. The dog was praying at   the time. He lay on his back and turned his eyes upon the retreating   form.

Presently  he struggled to his feet and started after the child. The latter  wandered in a perfunctory way toward his home, stopping at times to  investigate various matters. During one of these pauses he discovered  the little dark-brown dog who was following him with the air of a  footpad.

The child beat his pursuer with a small stick he had  found. The dog lay down and prayed until the child had finished, and  resumed his journey. Then he scrambled erect and took up the pursuit  again.

On the way to his home the child turned many times and beat  the dog, proclaiming with childish gestures that he held him in  contempt as an unimportant dog, with no value save for a moment. For  being this quality of animal the dog apologized and eloquently expressed  regret, but he continued stealthily to follow the child. His manner  grew so very guilty that he slunk like an assassin.

When the child  reached his door-step, the dog was industriously ambling a few yards in  the rear. He became so agitated with shame when he again confronted the   child that he forgot the dragging rope. He tripped upon it and fell   forward.

The child sat down on the step and the two had another interview.  During it the dog greatly exerted himself to please the child. He  performed a few gambols with such abandon that the child suddenly saw  him to be a valuable thing. He made a swift, avaricious charge and  seized the rope.

He dragged his captive into a hall and up many  long stairways in a dark tenement. The dog made willing efforts, but he  could not hobble very skillfully up the stairs because he was very small  and soft, and at last the pace of the engrossed child grew so energetic  that the dog became panic-stricken. In his mind he was being dragged  toward a grim unknown. His eyes grew wild with the terror of it. He  began to wiggle his head frantically and to brace his legs.

The  child redoubled his exertions. They had a battle on the stairs. The  child was victorious because he was completely absorbed in his purpose,  and because the dog was very small. He dragged his acquirement to the  door of his home, and finally with triumph across the threshold.

No one was in. The child sat down on the floor and made overtures to  the dog. These the dog instantly accepted. He beamed with affection upon  his new friend. In a short time they were firm and abiding comrades.

When  the child's family appeared, they made a great row. The dog was  examined and commented upon and called names. Scorn was leveled at him  from all eyes, so that he became much embarrassed and drooped like a  scorched plant. But the child went sturdily to the center of the floor,  and, at the top of his voice, championed the dog. It happened that he  was roaring protestations, with his arms clasped about the dog's neck,  when the father of the family came in from work.

The parent  demanded to know what the blazes they were making the kid howl for. It  was explained in many words that the infernal kid wanted to introduce a   disreputable dog into the family.

A family council was held. On  this depended the dog's fate, but he in no way heeded, being busily  engaged in chewing the end of the child's dress.

The affair was  quickly ended. The father of the family, it appears, was in a  particularly savage temper that evening, and when he perceived that it  would amaze and anger everybody if such a dog were allowed to remain, he  decided that it should be so. The child, crying softly, took his friend  off to a retired part of the room to hobnob with him, while the father  quelled a fierce rebellion of his wife. So it came to pass that the dog  was a member of the household.

He  and the child were associated together at all times save when the child  slept. The child became a guardian and a friend. If the large folk  kicked the dog and threw things at him, the child made loud and violent  objections. Once when the child had run, protesting loudly, with tears  raining down his face and his arms outstretched, to protect his friend,  he had been struck in the head with a very large saucepan from the hand  of his father, enraged at some seeming lack of courtesy in the dog. Ever   after, the family were careful how they threw things at the dog.   Moreover, the latter grew very skilful in avoiding missiles and feet. In  a small room containing a stove, a table, a bureau and some chairs, he  would display strategic ability of a high order, dodging, feinting and  scuttling about among the furniture. He could force three or four people  armed with brooms, sticks and handfuls of coal, to use all their  ingenuity to get in a blow. And even when they did, it was seldom that  they could do him a serious injury or leave any imprint.

But when  the child was present, these scenes did not occur. It came to be  recognized that if the dog was molested, the child would burst into  sobs, and as the child, when started, was very riotous and practically  unquenchable, the dog had therein a safeguard.

However, the child   could not always be near. At night, when he was asleep, his dark-brown   friend would raise from some black corner a wild, wailful cry, a song of  infinite lowliness and despair, that would go shuddering and sobbing   among the buildings of the block and cause people to swear. At these   times the singer would often be chased all over the kitchen and hit with  a great variety of articles.

Sometimes, too, the child himself  used to beat the dog, although it is not known that he ever had what  could be truly called a just cause. The dog always accepted these  thrashings with an air of admitted guilt. He was too much of a dog to  try to look to be a martyr or to plot revenge. He received the blows  with deep humility, and furthermore he forgave his friend the moment the  child had finished, and was ready to caress the child's hand with his  little red tongue.

When misfortune came upon the child, and his  troubles overwhelmed him, he would often crawl under the table and lay  his small distressed head on the dog's back. The dog was ever  sympathetic. It is not to be supposed that at such times he took  occasion to refer to the unjust beatings his friend, when provoked, had  administered to him.

He did not achieve any notable degree of  intimacy with the other members of the family. He had no confidence in  them, and the fear that he would express at their casual approach often  exasperated them exceedingly. They used to gain a certain satisfaction  in underfeeding him, but finally his friend the child grew to watch the  matter with some care, and when he forgot it, the dog was often  successful in secret for himself.

So the dog prospered. He  developed a large bark, which came wondrously from such a small rug of a  dog. He ceased to howl persistently at night. Sometimes, indeed, in his  sleep, he would utter little yells, as from pain, but that occurred, no  doubt, when in his dreams he encountered huge flaming dogs who  threatened him direfully.

His  devotion to the child grew until it was a sublime thing. He wagged at  his approach; he sank down in despair at his departure. He could detect  the sound of the child's step among all the noises of the neighborhood.  It was like a calling voice to him.

The scene of their   companionship was a kingdom governed by this terrible potentate, the   child; but neither criticism nor rebellion ever lived for an instant in the heart of the one subject. Down in the mystic, hidden fields of his little dog-soul bloomed flowers of love and fidelity and perfect faith.

The  child was in the habit of going on many expeditions to observe strange  things in the vicinity. On these occasions his friend usually jogged  aimfully along behind. Perhaps, though, he went ahead. This necessitated  his turning around every quarter-minute to make sure the child was  coming. He was filled with a large idea of the importance of these  journeys. He would carry himself with such an air! He was proud to be  the retainer of so great a monarch.

One day, however, the father  of the family got quite exceptionally drunk. He came home and held  carnival with the cooking utensils, the furniture and his wife. He was  in the midst of this recreation when the child, followed by the   dark-brown dog, entered the room. They were returning from their   voyages.

The child's practised eye instantly noted his father's state. He  dived under the table, where experience had taught him was a rather safe  place. The dog, lacking skill in such matters, was, of course, unaware  of the true condition of affairs. He looked with interested eyes at his  friend's sudden dive. He interpreted it to mean: Joyous gambol. He  started to patter across the floor to join him. He was the picture of a  little dark-brown dog en route to a friend.

The head of the family   saw him at this moment. He gave a huge howl of joy, and knocked the dog down with a heavy coffee-pot. The dog, yelling in supreme astonishment and fear, writhed to his feet and ran for cover. The man kicked out with  a ponderous foot. It caused the dog to swerve as if caught in a tide. A  second blow of the coffee-pot laid him upon the floor.

Here the  child, uttering loud cries, came valiantly forth like a knight. The  father of the family paid no attention to these calls of the child, but  advanced with glee upon the dog. Upon being knocked down twice in swift   succession, the latter apparently gave up all hope of escape. He rolled over on his back and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same   time with his eyes and his ears he offered up a small prayer.

But  the father was in a mood for having fun, and it occurred to him that it  would be a fine thing to throw the dog out of the window. So he reached  down and grabbing the animal by a leg, lifted him, squirming, up. He  swung him two or three times hilariously about his head, and then flung  him with great accuracy through the window.

The  soaring dog created a surprise in the block. A woman watering plants in  an opposite window gave an involuntary shout and dropped a flower-pot. A  man in another window leaned perilously out to watch the flight of the  dog. A woman, who had been hanging out clothes in a yard, began to caper  wildly. Her mouth was filled with clothes-pins, but her arms gave vent  to a sort of exclamation. In appearance she was like a gagged prisoner.  Children ran whooping.

The dark-brown body crashed in a heap on  the roof of a shed five stories below. From thence it rolled to the  pavement of an alleyway.

The child in the room far above burst  into a long, dirgelike cry, and toddled hastily out of the room. It took  him a long time to reach the alley, because his size compelled him to  go downstairs backward, one step at a time, and holding with both hands  to the step above.

When they came for him later, they found him seated by the body of his dark-brown friend.