The Tricky Craft of Life - Friday Video Distractions (and maybe mild meditations) with Mike Norton

  Five films - three stories, with four of the five films being adaptations of the same two stories - and an audio book of one of the same twice film-adapted story, are on tap this week. More or less.

  Recently got around to a film I was aware of, but knew nothing more about than that it starred Simon Pegg: Hector and the Search for Happiness (2014, R, 1 hr 54 min), available on Hulu.

 Pegg plays the eponymous Hector, a London psychiatrist with a thriving practice, in an extremely orderly and to most appearances happy life. This is complete with a long-term, committed relationship with Clara (Rosamund Pike), who comes up with commercial names for drugs for the pharmaceutical company she works for.
 Finally realizing a creeping dissatisfaction that turns disruptive, Hector realizes he's not helping any of his patients achieve actual happiness. Further, he decides that he has no hope of achieving that  until he comes to understand happiness - what it is and what brings it. This sets him on a sort of open-ended pilgrimage, as he travels to China, Africa, and then Los Angeles - the latter two stops driven by wanting to reconnect with two old friends, with whom he at least distantly remembers being happy. As a surprise bon voyage gift, Clare slips a gift box with a blank, bound notebook in it dedicated to his search for happiness. Discovering this as he falls from his bag on the plane when it's being stored,

he begins to make illustrated entries in it, accompanying each with a numbered lesson du jour, directly or indirectly about what happiness is and isn't.
  Clare also misunderstands what this journey is about, thinking it's a mid-life crisis that is ultimately focused shallowly on a romantic relationship from his college days. At one point she even gives him permission to cheat, though this is so far from Hector's consideration that what she says goes by him as a mystery message he's too hidebound and polite to ask her about. Clare believes what she does in large part because the otherwise seemingly unsentimental Hector has an old snapshot of himself with long-ago boon companions Alan (Chad Willett) and Agnes (Toni Collette) in his sock drawer. A photo he's never shown her. That he packed it for the trip reinforced that in her mind. Enough of this is clear before he leaves that neither is certain if this is just a temporary separation or an ending. He cannot tell her how long he'll be gone, and she cannot promise she'll be there when he returns.
   The film is based on Francis Lelord's novel of the same name, published in France in 2002, translated into English eight years later.

  Both a critical and commercial miss, unfortunately, with many generally finding it too schmaltzy, a point I wouldn't argue against. Those who were drawn to it because it starred Simon Pegg probably didn't get quite what they'd hoped for from the perhaps tad too pure of heart Hector, whose only real flaws involve having grown into a too guardedly cautious operating persona rather than an authentic human being.
  Fortunately for me, I enjoyed it more than the bulk of the critics did -- though some of that may be that it's hitting me at an opportune time, with my thoughts have turned of late towards the deep peril of an unexamined, unlived life.
  Oh, there's plenty in the film to pick apart, including it being yet another story of a person having the career and financial freedom to just set out on an open-ended, globe-hopping quest of self-discovery. How nice. That's an immovably massive chunk of fantasy for a great many of us right there. It isn't just overly sentimental, but also lugubrious as it rolls in towards its finish. Looking at some stills from it, especially where the characters are supposed to be feeling joy or sharing a special moment, it's tough to avoid seeing how comically forced most of it is.
  Setting all that and various serendipitous, dramatic elements aside (somehow without throwing one's back out hoisting the tear-sodden sentiment), it still made for a thought-provoking journey for me. As mentioned, though, I was primed for the message, so my critical bar was set very low. This isn't something to approach while in a cynical mood, unless you just want to have savage sport mocking the characters. I'll stop just short of suggesting you keep a supply of insulin handy.

   Over on Amazon Prime, for a darker, odder take on a willfully, narrowly-directed life, we currently have two film adaptations of Herman Melville's late 1853 short story Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. Each is rewritten to be, respectively, in 20th and early 21st century settings, though the latter version has an odd, modern fairy tale aspect that blurs the time period, with the office building looking like an imposing, forbidden, hilltop monolith.

    Here is the trailer for the 2001 version:

  As mentioned above, this later version takes a more surreal approach to the story than the 1970 version. That worked better for me when I first saw it some eighteen years ago, but some aspects now strike me as possibly excessive and distracting bits of style. Still very enjoyable, with the essential tale intact, and with an interesting cast.
  The core of the story is the same in original written version and both films: A curiously quiet and reserved young man applies for a lowly clerk position, and is soon hired. At first he is a model employee, quietly and efficiently attending to his duties. One day, though, he's asked to do something else, to which he responds "I would prefer not to," and then goes back to whatever else he was doing.
   It's a non-confrontational act of civil disobedience that befuddles his employer so much that at first he's at a loss as to what to do. Attempts to treat it as a misunderstanding, and a matter simply requiring a different approach, lead nowhere. Over time, Bartleby stops performing the other clerical tasks he'd previously been excelling at, responding to each request with his "I would prefer not to."
  Worse, his employer finds upon arriving at the office very early one day, that somewhere along the line Bartleby had begun living there.

  Matters escalate, including tensions with other staff members in the little office. This leads to some substantial moves by the employer, none of which change Bartleby's arc of behavior, which has by this point devolved to him just being there, staring at something - the focus of his attention varies with each version.
  Without wanting to spoil the story, I'll simply say that it doesn't end well.
  I've included it in this week's theme because this is a case of character who effects willful change in his circumstance in a disarmingly passive way. It's all so tragically flawed because it's not creating a better existence for himself, but instead stripping away any hints of life and engagement with the world, replacing them with isolation and emptiness. It's a life crafted by acts of omission and disengagement. A joyless aversion. Fairly reasonably interpreted as depression, which is all the more tragic as Melville wrote this during an early, peak (with respect to his status while he was alive) career point, almost as if he could see the many, many years of toiling in obscurity in clerical work lying between him and his death, his early brush with notoriety as a writer long forgotten. While highly regarded now, that was only a matter of his work being rediscovered well after his death. He died believing he had, at best, been a brief flash in the pan.
   The film versions on Amazon are a 1970 version set in London, starring John McEnry and Paul Scofield, and a 2001 version set in the U.S. starring David Paymer and Crispin Glover, each of these versions simply titled Bartleby.
   If you don't have Amazon Prime, the 2001 version is, at least for now, also sitting there free on YouTube:

  As the original story is long since in the public domain, audiobook versions are around, including this one by Frank Marcopolos also over on YouTube, who brings some helpful vibrancy to the reading that's lacking in some of the others I've come across. If you just want to close your eyes and take in Melville's mid-19th century tale as written, in just under 1 hour and 40 minutes, this is a good, free choice.

The story was written as told by the narrator, the man who hired Bartleby, recounting it largely as a most unusual character and series of events, but in the lead he's also trying to capture a then-unique work experience which he felt most readers wouldn't be aware of in the mid-nineteenth century.
   Tales of people striking out on unusual paths seeking life's meaning or simply in the name of freedom are not uncommon. Just off-hand I can mention W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, following one of the Lost Generation following WWI back before it was numbered. There have been two big screen adaptations - a Tyrone Power version in 1946, a copy of which is currently sitting for any interested on YouTube...

  ...and one starring Bill Murray in '84 - for which I can currently only offer a (poorly-assembled) trailer. Oh, the film's available, but currently only to buy or rent. The film was a commercial failure, but a great deal of that seems to be in large part to an audience unwilling to accept this kind of role from and for Murray, especially coming out the same year as Ghostbusters -- a film Murray largely did as part of the deal to get financing approved for Razor's Edge, the project he was genuinely interested in.

    There's also 2005 Australian version I've never seen, and for which I do not even have a trailer to show you! (Ashes, ashes... I am failed.)
    This is a fairly large genre, even if one excludes the many, many inspirational biopics out there. I'm sure each of you have at least one that's stuck with you over the years. I'd be happy to hear about it, to see if it's something I've seen or should look for. Please tell me, or give whatever other reactions you might have, in the Comments below.
   Before signing off for the week, I want to mention that (as I'd expected) I greatly enjoyed season two of The Umbrella Academy (Netflix) which landed a week ago. I also want to remind you again (as I will throughout the month) about Turner Classic Movie's Summer Under the Stars, which features a daily star spotlight from 6am until the same time the following day. For Saturday through next Friday, here are the ones in the spotlight:

• Sat.: Charlie Chaplin
• Sun: Goldie Hawn
• Mon: Norma Shearer
• Tues: Sammy Davis Jr.
• Wed: Lana Turner
• Thurs: John Barrymore
• Fri: Steve McQueen

   The 31-day guide link I provided just before this week's list of stars helps lay it all out. Again, I hope you find some old favorites there or, even better, end up discovering some new ones.
    Enjoy the weekend, take care of yourselves and, if you're able, do what you can for at least one someone else. The path may not be direct, but it all comes back.     -  Mike