Pursuing Happiness: A (What?!!) Movie Review

I'm interested in happiness.

I've taken a course in happiness.

I've participated in a happiness study.

I've read lots of books about happiness. Lots.

And now I've watched a movie about happiness. So just move it on down the road, book bloggers, if you wish, but I'm about to post my first first movie review, a review of the movie Pursuing Happiness.

Adam Shell and Nicholas Kraft spent two years seeking out and interviewing four hundred of the happiest people in America. Pursuing Happiness is the result.

Shell and Kraft talk to the mayor of a Cajun city in Louisiana, a man who lived with a tribe on the Amazon for two years, a woman with cancer, a man who lost his hands when he was thirty, a fellow who creates little gardens of beauty in his big city, two men who make benches for tired people waiting for buses.

These happy people are mesmerizing. They zing with joy. They are alive. They make things. They scuba dive. They hug. They laugh. They are a sharp contrast to the usual Dr. Phil sort of folks you see interviewed.

Shell has had lots of time to think about the wonder of these people. What is their secret? he asks.

"What struck me most about the happiest people in America is how normal their lives are. The secret to happiness, then (if you can call it a secret) is how to face tragedy without allowing fear to cripple us. And how to do that? Well," Shell says, "that is what I learned from the happiest people in America."

What is it that keeps us from being happy?

"For it is fear that is the true enemy of happiness. When we do not let fear consume our thoughts and dictate our actions, happiness is right there waiting for us," Shell tells us.

This isn't a Steven Spielberg movie. There is a typo or two and the occasional odd camera angle and that annoying glare on people's glasses here and there. There aren't any special effects and nothing blows up. But it is a movie with a huge heart, a movie that has important things to share with the oodles of folks out here who just can't seem to be happy as well as with those of us who'd just like to be a teeny bit happier.


Here's a short preview:


Where can you see the entire movie? Check the website for more information.

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

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