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Peter Chelsom is the co-writer and director of the new film Hector and the Search for Happiness. The film is based on a book of the same name by Francois Lelord, a kind of fable, that has been wildly popular in Europe. Psychology Today recently had the opportunity to co-host a screening and panel discussion about the film's themes. I later spoke further with the director. What follows is part of that discussion.
Q: Peter, you’re a thoughtful guy. You've devoted a lot of time to writing the screenplay and making the film. What attracted you to the project?
A: A film about happiness in a world that has lost sight of the shore felt like a very timely subject to tackle. I am fortunate to have been working with the same co-writer, Tinker Lindsay, for many years. We love adapting novels. We felt this was up our street.
Q: Were you mad to take on a film about the quest for happiness, such a driving force in American culture these days?
A: I try not to think of it in those terms, otherwise I’d never get out of bed in the mornings. Film-making is enough of a fight as it is, without telling myself I’m “taking on” an American driving force. I honestly just try to be personal, not to come from a place of attack or combat or defense.
Q: As the co-writer and director, what perspectives on happiness did you want viewers to come away with?
A: First of all, I want viewers to feel good about themselves, to feel grateful, because in 99 percent of cases they have no real reason not to feel grateful. I hope the film puts their lives in perspective. I hope they come away feeling as if happiness is actually a responsibility. But let it not be forgotten: It is entertainment. I may have the right to call myself an artist, but I'm also an entertainer. I want my films to be special but not necessarily elite. We designed the film to be a visceral experience, without getting too bogged down in the debate of happiness. As Stanley Kubrick would say, "The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it." Love that.
Q: Since we keep pursuing happiness without, apparently, achieving it, what are we getting so wrong about it?
A: I often ask my 9 and 8 year old sons what is the secret to happiness. And they reply “kindness”. Because that is the best I can do. And it’s the best they can do. It’s an action. It’s transitive. They can have a mission, make a plan, help that person, compliment that person. Anything is better than sitting there wanting to be happy. It’s like wanting to be in love. They say love is an action. Well, I believe happiness is the byproduct or side effect of various actions. Making happiness the goal will often disappoint.
Q: I myself loathe the word happiness. I much prefer the idea of satisfaction—it seems so much deeper and more enduring. Do you make a distinction?
A: I like that. Satisfaction is not such a "giddy" state. It is more realistic. Satisfaction suggests "enough"! And basically we all have enough. To claim to be satisfied is a claim that you have enough.
Q: As a Brit who has lived now lived in America for some time, do you see any major differences in their approaches to happiness?
A: I have lived in America for 18 years. I became a citizen 10 years ago. I have to confess to feeling better here in America. I think my sensibilities are actually more American. This film is very open-armed, very personal. America is more open-armed in response. Some might call that the "feel-good" factor. If so, then I would say Britain is sometimes culpable of the "feel-bad" factor.
A lot of people have said that the film is like a great big hug. I think the British are less good at receiving hugs! Look, it’s a balance. I love the British. I love the British sense of humor. I used to have a T-shirt when I moved here that said "I’m pumping irony." But there is an underlying negativity, cynicism in Britain. I think it’s why being commercial is a dirty word in Britain. I remember some prominent British film critics talking of Slumdog Millionaire in terms of its director Danny Boyle “flexing his populist muscle.” Really? If it means taking $365M at the box office and winning 8 Oscars, I hope Danny keeps flexing it! Good for him.
On the other hand, maybe America’s vehement avoidance of unhappiness is where it all starts to go wrong.
Q: One of the things that surprised me is that the book the film is based on is a French creation that was also wildly popular in Germany. I have a hard time thinking of the French and Germans madly pursuing happiness. Is this an American export?
A: Yes, the book is popular in France and Germany. I actually think it might be more a case of those countries enjoying the writing style, the fable of it all. When we did the adaptation, we had to pull that back; we wanted to appear less naïve in the film. I don’t think it’s that they "madly pursue happiness." I think it’s that they recognize the books lessons in where they might be misguided.
Q: Hector finds that people in war-torn, corrupt, and impoverished parts of Africa hold the secrets, or at least one secret, of happiness. Isn't this a form of emotional colonialism? By any objective standards, the people lived miserable lives. yet the book/film views them as happy natives, and Hector mines the secret of their happiness without doing much for them.
A: As with the children in your own book, A Nation of Wimps, the Hector of our film is written as the grown-up version of an over-protected wimp. He has led a safe, sheltered, and privileged white man’s existence. He is consistently the curious, naïve hero in this fable and the film’s job is to challenge him constantly, to jar him, to"‘grow him up." More fool Hector for believing that it is just a world of happy natives (he does the same in China).
Eventually this point of view lands him in jail facing death. He has been idealistic. And the wisdom comes from the realists he encounters, not from the idealists. From the first woman he meets on the plane to Africa, to Marcel, his old friend Michael’s bodyguard and lover, they clarify the delusion. As Marcel puts it in reference to self-congratulatory fund-raisers “there’s a difference between being here and being here to be photographed being here.” In other words, don’t donate, comment or criticize from a safe distance—engage in the reality of the world.
And in doing so, Hector is forced to engage in those aspects of his own unchallenged personal psyche. At least Hector gets his hands dirty: he works so well with the doctors in the field that they ask him to stay. But Hector has a different calling. As again Marcel points out, “The mind can hurt as much as the body.” Poverty, corruption and brutality are all depicted within the Africa part of the story. If their capacity for joy seems richer there, it comes from truly knowing the opposite. As the monk in China puts it “I’m happy because I’ve been through so much.” It is certainly what we witnessed first-hand.
Q: Everybody is searching for happiness here. Yet more and more people seem to be getting depressed. Is the quest for happiness itself making people depressed?
A: Well put. Yes, the quest itself is making people depressed because the quest is somewhat futile. It will disappoint again and again. It makes us needy. Advertising and credit have made sure we will always be disappointed. In adverts they essentially tell us we are losers if we don’t buy, drive, or wear what they offer. And we are even bigger losers if we don’t borrow to buy, drive, or wear whatever.
As the film states, making happiness the goal does not seem to work. The other problem with a "quest" for happiness is that we consciously flee from unhappiness. The emotion of happiness cannot really be separated. Real happiness is richness. And richness is the full spectrum of all the colors, all the emotions.
Yes, we need to embrace it all if we are to stand a chance at being happy. In the film, Professor Coreman (played by Christopher Plummer) talks of how, when we lose ourselves in various activities, we experience happiness as a byproduct, as a side effect. He suggests that “we should concern ourselves not so much with the pursuit of happiness, but more with the happiness of pursuit.”
As writers, we really did research the brain mapping that takes place in the happiness experiment at the end of the film. I will never forget the moment when Canada’s equivalent to Professor Coreman and expert on the subject told us that they have discovered that when they remove depression, happiness does not increase. Our film, right there, in a nutshell!
Q: Has this film changed the way you approach your life and its satisfactions?
A: Yes, yes, and yes. I’m more realistic about happiness and therefore happier. It is as if I have raised the zero on my axis. The lows are not so desperate, and the highs are more relished. I feel lucky to be who I am.
Q: In a panel discussion after a screening, Simon Pegg, who plays Hector, talked about the ubiquity of cellphones and how they in many ways impede true connection, which is of course a great source of happiness. He asked if our digital devotion was the apocalypse. I wonder whether the extraordinary possibilities of the digital universe may perhaps be overwhelming our humble little small-tribe social natures and in some ways making us more miserable than happy. is this something you think about?
A: I think about this constantly. First of all, it is as if the smartphone has shattered any last chance we had at being quiet, being still, being on our own and being content with that. We sit in Starbucks with the urgent need to post that we are in Starbucks. We are seriously addicted.
Secondly, I believe that expressing our opinions via the Internet is often not true communication. Again, we do it from a safe distance. We do it and we include all our friends. We cc many others. It becomes a form of grandstanding. And we just become more defensive, more entrenched in our beliefs. It’s not real communication.
Our film makes the point that “listening is loving." Sure, that may sound like something you’d find in a fortune cookie, but it’s actually very profound when you really think about it. It’s a lifetime’s practice for some. The great irony is that it’s all getting harder in the digital age.
Photo Credit: Ed Araquel (c) 2014 Egoli Tossell Film/ Co-Produktionsgesellschaft ""Hector 1"" GmbH & Co. KG/ Happiness Productions Inc./ Wild Bunch Germany/ Construction Film"
