seven pounds of happyness

Before reading this, you should be warned: you will know the ending of Seven Pounds by the time you finish this post. If you would rather not know the ending, stop reading now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

As a general rule, I like depressing movies. And by depressing, I mean movies without the nice tightly-packaged, tears-of-joy, they-lived-happily-ever-after endings. I like movies that give you a bittersweet taste in your mouth, that leave you wondering how the story really ends, like Spanglish or Gone Baby Gone. And I thought (foolishly, it seems) that Seven Pounds might be another one of those movies. Depressing, yes; but with a slight glimmer of hope as the end credits roll by. Alas, I was wrong. But then again, I probably should have seen this coming.

I assumed the same thing a few years ago, when I went to see The Pursuit of Happyness, director Gabriele Muccino’s other film-of-note, also starring Will Smith. We watched Smith’s character, Chris Gardner, go from attempting to sell expensive medical devices that no one wants to landing an internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm. Despite intense setbacks (including his wife leaving him, being kicked out of his apartment, and working as an intern without pay), the movie ends with Chris finally “making it”, so to speak. It’s your typical American story, where the protagonist brings himself out of his wretched condition, yanking his bootstraps to a position higher than anyone could have imagined. And if that’s all the story was about, I might have liked it. I may not have put it on my “must see” list, but I could have given it a favorable review to a friend.

But as Chris goes through these various trials and tribulations, as he slowly works his way to the top, he does so alone. And I don’t just mean in the fact that his wife leaves him. Despite being a rather nice guy, Chris appears to have no friends, no extended family, no former colleagues. We don’t even get to see the other interns he’s competing against for that lucrative job. Aside from his son, Chris has few human connections, and is, in a sense, much like Smith’s other character in I am Legend. He does his daily jobs, deals with daily setbacks, and maintains a daily relationship with only one living creature in his life. The biggest exception being that, in I am Legend, Robert Neville seems to understand that there is something missing – that human connectedness. He’s so desperate for that interaction that he broods over the right way to ask a mannequin out on a date. Chris, on the other hand, remains oblivious. He may not say that he doesn’t need help from anyone, but his actions and his obvious lack of real relationships certainly suggest otherwise. After all, a self-made man doesn’t get that way with outside help.

Enter Seven Pounds. Muccino takes that same idea – aloneness – and pulls it up to the next level. Ben Thomas is also alone – partially by choice, partially by accident…a really horrific accident. While driving with his wife, he answers his phone, veers slightly into the other lane, and runs into another vehicle carrying six passengers. All six are killed in the accident, along with his wife. And now Ben must exact the punishment from himself. And it seems that the only way to pay for his crime is to exact the figurative “pound of flesh” for the seven lives he took, which adds up to the “seven pounds” in the movie title…except the metaphor becomes quite literal in his case. He decides to find seven worthy people to benefit (as a side note, it seems that good people are usually vegetarians), which means donating organs to help them, which means…suicide.

Instead of the self-made man in The Pursuit of Happyness, Ben is the self-destroyed man: he devastated his life through his inattentive driving and now he decides that he must sacrifice himself as a self-induced punishment for his sin of omission. And, just as the self-made man takes all the credit for his good fortune, Ben also takes complete responsibility for his misfortune. “In seven days, God created the world,” he intones as the film begins. “And in seven seconds, I shattered mine.” And after those pseudo-omnipotent words are uttered, the movie begins to follow the theme of “what one man has destroyed, let no man (or God) put back together.” Ben’s brother tries desperately to help to him, but Ben can only run away. When he finally finds love again, his first reaction is to call his best friend and say, “It’s time.” And the suicide begins.

And this is where Seven Pounds take the next step away from The Pursuit of Happyness. Chris Gardner did not pursue help and help did not pursue him. Ben Thomas had help all around him and he fled at the sight of it. Whether men are building their lives or tearing them down, the process seems to be a one-man show. Except, of course, when it comes to helping others. Because even though Ben’s life is beyond repair, that doesn’t mean that his work is done. Ben now has the power to save other people…just not himself. As he lay in a tub of ice water, being shocked to death by a jellyfish, I half-expected a gaggle of priests to enter the bathroom, crying, “He saved others, but he cannot save himself!” The all-powerful Ben – with the fate of seven people in his hands, with the ability to transform their sad and sorry lives into something good – has none of Chris’s bootstrap-pulling strength and instead succumbs to his self-inflicted, self-appointed fate.

I’m looking at other reviews of Seven Pounds, and many of them seem to think that the film exuded a sense of “redemption.” And for the life of me, I cannot think of a single redeeming quality in the whole film, since the whole story centered around the big sacrifice in those final fifteen minutes. Since when did suicide solve anything? I can’t pretend to understand all the ins-and-outs with suicide, but for the most part, I’m fairly certain that suicide is the cowardly response to the trials of life. And perhaps some think that it’s romantic that Ben wins the affections of Emily, a woman with only weeks to live due to a congenital heart condition, then sleeps with her, commits suicide, and leaves his (literal) heart to her. But I felt cheated. I felt cheated for Emily. Here was a man who seemed to care for her, who gave her the incredible gift of life…but what kind of life was it? She had been alone until Ben arrived on her doorstep. With the exception of a nurse, a nice neighbor lady, and some prepackaged food from her sister, Emily had been making ends meet on her own. And then Ben showed up and changed everything. There was a relationship, there was companionship, and then he was gone. As if that interaction didn’t matter. As if all she really wanted was to live and that human connection was simply an extra option in that life. And all Ben left her with was a broken heart.

Seven Pounds and its precursor The Pursuit of Happyness both assume that man can do it all on his own (at least, if man is Will Smith). That relationships are ultimately unnecessary. That life can be fulfilling and “remarkable” with sheer willpower and without real people. And in part, it all seems plausible. But what is the eventual cost? The sight of both characters in empty rooms just depressed me to no end. And the fact that they withdrew into these rooms voluntarily just made it all worse. It made me think of a much more optimistic film, About a Boy, where the whole idea that a man can be an entity unto himself was thoroughly debunked. “You need back-up,” one of the characters says at the end of that film. And you do. To go through life alone – without that extra “back-up” of family and friends, without the assurance of people who care and who want to help you when things go bad – is a horrible fate. And what makes it worse is that people like Muccino seem to think that they are portraying a positive outlook on life. But their so-called redemption has no appeal to me. Give me Christ any day. A personal Savior who not only died for me, but lives for me. Who helps me up when I’m down. Who created the world and maintains it, no matter what happens in my day-to-day life. Who rebuilds my life from the ashes into something more beautiful and glorious than I ever could have imagined. Who offers the deepest kind of relationship. Now that’s a happy ending.