While looking at the film on the internet i came across the review which is about the american dream with The Pursuit of Happyness. I found it really interesting on his take of a black poor man becoming a success.
"I met my father for the first time when I was 28 years old. When I had children, my children were going to know who their father was."
"Don't ever let somebody tell you you can't do something. Not even me. All right? You got a dream? You gotta protect it. People can't do something themselves, they want to tell you you can't do it. You want something, go get it. "
The Pursuit of Happyness also presents the American Dream as an achievable reality. It begins when Chris asks a Dean Witter broker (who he sees getting out of a bright-red Ferrari) what's needed to do the job. The answer he gets back is this: "You've got to be good with numbers and good with people." Chris believes he has those skills and aggressively pursues executives at Dean Witter once he discovers internships are available. As you can see from the quotes above they are the advice he gives to his son, they a centraly about family and believing all in youself.
When watching the film the first feeling i got was an American Raising aspiration film. Everthing has a warmly glow to it ( including the film poster), you have a great suspiction that you know that everything is going to work out well. Anyone cannot watch The Pursuit Of Happyness and try and deny that it hasnt got anything to do with American dream as even the title is to one of the rights to an American.
However going back to the article, which i attached at the beginning of the post. Ok im not totally in agreement with it however seeing that view it made me think more on the characters within the film.
"Black and poor, to dwell in the white man's stock market heaven."
That is completely true, Chris is the only black guy to even be in the stockmarket office, or even outside of where he lives. The only time you see another black guy in the film is Chris friends who own a shop in the glumest place. This surprises me because now days in film, television etc are so careful to be poltical correct and make sure that even within a shot at a school playground there are different ethnic groups to not offend anyone.
But this is my view in the 21st century and now looking at the film i realised it it following a real life story set in the 1980s so i suppose things were different then, and maybe the best jobs did go to white men. Imagine if it was set now it would be completely different, or even a few years time once Barack Obama have been in power for a while?
Anyway that was a bit side tracked, The Pursuit of Happyness is a light warming film that is great to show the American Dream actually works.
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