Happiness is…? Everyone from philosophers to bumper-sticker makers have had a go at ending that sentence, and sometimes the jokes that follow underline just how hard it is to hit this moving target. Peace, prosperity, bright prospects – if these were the answer then Australia would be the happiest nation on earth, instead of Norway. But the fact that our hedonism hasn’t delivered is only likely to increase this month’s interest in Hector And The Search For Happiness.
British funny man Simon Pegg (The World’s End, Paul, Hot Fuzz) stars as Hector, a successful psychologist who is nagged by a troubled childhood and adult regrets. Before he settles down, he determines to set off on a worldwide trip with a single question in mind: ‘What makes you happy?’ Pursuing the answer will bring him into the company of millionaires, drug lords, doctors without borders and dying mothers – and the answers he uncovers will point him inescapably to a single conclusion. But will it be the right one?
Hector And The Search For Happiness is pitch-perfect in the way it balances both Pegg’s dry comedy with the longing to discover the key to humanity’s most longed for state. Writer / Director Peter Chelsom’s storytelling revolves around Hector’s travel journal, making philosophical points with Pegg’s gleeful sketches. These in turn become the transitions between locations as well as the audience’s personal notebook, with Hector’s conclusions scrawling themselves across the margins.
To his credit, Chelsom explores and explodes some of the more obvious fallacies about happiness. In China Hector meets Edward (Stellan Skarsgård), a wealthy businessman who’s had the time and means to explore every form of sensual pleasure. But clearly his Solomon-like journey hasn’t arrived at the right destination:
Hector: Edward, are you happy?
Edward: When you Work as hard as I do you don’t have time to ask that question. That’s why I’m going to quit.
Hector: What now?
Edward: God no! In another 20 million. You pick a goal and you move towards it. ‘Keep moving!’ That’s my motto.
Like many Australians Edward is a victim of what economists refer to as the ‘law of diminishing returns’. Paradoxically the more you have of the ‘good things’ in life, the less likely they are to deliver the satisfaction you seek. That’s because happiness is more than just a transaction – insert $, get H. Mahatma Ghandi suggested happiness is what happens when, “… what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony,” but the ability to achieve that sort of exalted alignment, let alone enjoy it remains far beyond the reach of us ordinary people. Happiness, I have found, is much more a gift than an achievement, a result of someone else’s efforts than our own.
I could kid myself like Edward or Ghandi and believe that I construct my own happiness. But the truth is my happiness is an echo of God’s love. “Every good and perfect gift is from above,” the book of James reveals, “coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” Every good thing I enjoy is given to me, and recognising that is the first step over the threshold into lasting happiness.
My happiness does rely on external things, but eternal ones. I might lose everything, but so long as God’s love for me is secure, my happiness is safe forever. Though sad, even painful things happen to me, the evidence of His love will continue to abound so long as I keep my eyes open. As a Buddhist monk continually assures our Hector, “You hold all the cards.” The same monk even points heavenward at the end, leading our hero to the conclusion that, “We all have an obligation to be happy,” because we have been given much to be happy about. It’s just a pity that Hector And The Search For Happiness stops short of naming the Giver.
Hector and the Search for Happiness opens in Australian cinemas on October 23.
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