Director: Peter Chelsom
Score: 9/10
In Which The Public Doesn’t Enjoy Thoughtfulness
Wow. I’m just stunned, to be honest. Normally, my instincts say that any movie with under a 40 metacritic score should not just be put down, but hurled away with great force as you flee in the opposite direction. There’s no reason whatsoever that I would have expected this movie to work, outside of one personal recommendation from a co-worker. So, on the blind faith of his opinion alone, I set out to watch Hector and the Search for Happiness.
On the surface, it’s about as trite as plots get. Comparisons to Eat, Pray, Love for the story are inevitable (and a go-to crutch for reviewers who almost universally panned this film), and comparisons to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty for the style and feel are just as obligatory. In our film, we follow Hector (Simon Pegg), a psychiatrist (as it’s implied that he has an MD to go with his profession) who straight up burns out on his job of listening to the endless parade of #FirstWorldProblems that his patients bring to him. After a screaming fit at a particularly self-absorbed patient, Hector decides that he has to get away and travel the world. His goal: find out if happiness is actually something attainable or not, and what makes one happy.
No matter how you slice it, this movie really is a good one. The visuals are well-crafted, the plot is engaging and deceptively realistic, and the acting is top-notch. Seriously, this movie is made on the acting performances. Simon Pegg is (for the first time in my experience) both serious and intense, and he plays such a wide range of extremely convincing and human emotions with an openness that defies any attempt to label this film as “trite”. Stellan Skarsgård plays a businessman with means so great that money has no meaning, and even while he insists that his life is the one everything should aspire to, his subtle performance shows the viewer just how hollow he truly is inside, even as his every action and line of dialogue insists the opposite. Every character is just so... real. Nobody feels like a performance.
Essentially, this plot is act-for-act up against Walter Mitty, but with several poignant difference. First off, Walter Mitty gave its protagonist a clear-cut goal that just happened to intersect with a personal growth narrative—Hector’s story is the personal growth narrative. Walter Mitty largely was absorbed with experiences instead of relationships, and Hector’s journey is exactly the opposite. In essence, this idea and those key differences led me to a theory that’s as uncomfortable as it might be insightful, and one that may just explain why this movie was reviewed so harshly by so many critics.
The key thought in Walter Mitty is that you can improve your life and yourself if you really want to, all you have to do is try new things (even if they are insane flights of fancy that only the wealthy and unfettered could reasonably attempt), and it’s really not that important who you attach yourself to or why. It’s a very un-engaged philosophy, and one that frankly doesn’t demand all that much of the dreamer. It’s simple, because it asks us to think about ourselves, and we enjoy that. Hector, on the other hand, goes much deeper.
Weirdly enough, narcissism actually doesn’t enjoy the spotlight when it’s really shown on it. We like others to look at us, but can’t stand to look at ourselves. The most painful thing you can do is force someone like that to really look inward and evaluate, and HatSfH implicitly demands that certain something of the viewer. As Hector goes around the world copying down insights and thoughts as to the nature of happiness, the viewer is confronted several times with the question “are you a happy person?”, which is uncomfortably followed with “why not?” The meta-narrative within Hector is that we’re all responsible for our own happiness, and that also means dealing with unpleasant truths, enduring uncomfortable hardships, denying childish desires, and committing to something meaningful outside of your own experience. Unlike Walter Mitty’s flights of childlike wonder and idly fancy that offer cotton-candy-thin versions of temporary joy, Hector gives us the rock-solid truth that a narcissistic commitment to self is the key to an unhappy and unfulfilled life.
And that’s something that most of us just don’t want to hear.
Acting: 10
Story: 6
Visuals: 7
Sound: 5
Enjoyment: 9
Overall Score: 9/10
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