 We all have our, you know, our pluses and minuses. It was a crime of passion. I'm a passionate woman. Oh my God, NA5 checked. I haven't eaten anything. I had two eggs this morning. I had two eggs this morning. Welcome back to Life Lessons in the Film. Greetings. And today we're gonna be making sense of life through happiness, yeah. It was my first time watching it. Second time for him, he recommended it. And I was kind of throughout wondering why and why it's a comedy, but I still enjoyed the movie actually. It's a morbid comedy. It's a maroon comedy. It's a very realistic movie. If you haven't seen it, just don't go into it expecting an escape. So it follows basically a family, right? Family of six, five, yeah. Three sisters and a mom and dad who are separating. Documents their lives. And as it does document their lives little by little, this dysfunction, their dysfunction. The tapestry of dysfunction gets revealed. Exactly. So that's basically the whole movie, right? The four story lines are all involving the family. The one story line is the mother and father. The other is the daughter Joy. That was daughter Helen and daughter Trish. Yeah. The dysfunction becomes apparent in their avoidance, their denial. All of them are denying the reality of their lives. They're all denying their discontentment and their hell bent on avoiding dealing with the truth of their lives, except for Joy. I think she's just much more deep feeling than everybody else. Sometimes as a human being, in this movie I feel it depicts that if you are going through some rough times you either go to avoiding the pain of it and you do everything you can to basically pull the wool over your eyes, over your own eyes, literally. Either you're that kind of person or you're that kind of person who just cannot sit in discontentment. And it's like, we need to fix it, even if you're fumbling through things, which is what I feel like Joy is doing, right? Yeah. Which is probably why I think she's generally the main character. She's supposed to be the most sympathetic one. I wonder even also if that's why they chose to name that character Joy, in the sense that they're all searching for happiness, but I like that there's a definition or a distinction that I like about Joy versus pleasure versus happiness, right? Joy is a long lasting happiness. Pleasure is a short lived happiness and that comes with a lot of negative stuff. Always seeking pleasure, you're never satisfied. Joy is maybe not, doesn't have the same highs or the same lows, but it's a more constant happiness. So I wonder, I don't know, maybe that's... I feel like they did it on, no, I definitely don't think it was an accident, right? The reason I say that is, when you look at this family, right, Joy is the person who is the most abandoned. She's the most isolated and everybody who is supposed to love Joy, like her sisters and her parents, they've disappointed her a lot, you know? She's the scapegoat. She's the one they can always feel better about their lives and helps with their denial of not fixing their issues because they can love Joy. Yeah, and they always do that. Even as they talk to Joy, one of the sisters, so you have Joy, right? Joy is unmarried. She keeps moving from job to job. Trish is married to a psychiatrist and has three kids. The all-American dream life, basically. And then you have Helen, who has a, she's an author and she's a successful one at that. And she has a lot of these media gatherings or book signings and stuff and a lot of men who are just like fawning over her. And Joy is always this person that they're, oh, you know, we, she just, things never work out for her. Oh my God, poor Joy. You know what I mean? And these are conversations that they have with each other privately, but they also are quite happy to talk to Joy and to say, you know, Joy, we just felt like you were doomed to failure. This is Trish having conversations with Joy. We thought you were doomed to failure, but you know, I don't know, like things are looking up for you and I feel, I just want to tell you, I'm just so proud, you know? But there is so much condescending behavior, so much condescending interaction. I felt like she was condescending. 100%. It was absolutely that. Somehow you'd always just seem so doomed to failure. And now I see that's not true. There's a glimmer of hope for you after all. But I'm sorry, I know I'm repeating myself. I'm just really happy for you. They all do that. At the end scene where they're the whole family's together, Helen does a similar thing to Joy, but Joy doesn't seem to really read any of that. I think that it's one of those things where her role and she's so conditioned, so used to being the person that can absorb all that negativity or condescension or denial and distraction, that it's just so normal for her and she kind of just accepts that as just the way of things. So she doesn't even actually really get hurt by it, which is why it never changes. She never fights back, so there's no reason for them to ever be, have to reflect on, oh, am I really, maybe I am treating Joy unfairly. Because there's no shift in the paradigm. So I think, yeah. Definitely, Joy was just that one member of a family that was always treated so badly. And if you are treated that way since you were a kid, I think you obviously internalize that. And so she doesn't realize the problematic nature in which the sisters relate to her. She never fights back. She never thinks about, why is it that this family treats me this way? And then in her relationships outside of her family, she always attracts people that treat her the same way as her family does. They are selfish. They think of themselves. They don't think about how their behavior or the things that they say affects Joy. That's literally her dynamic. She keeps attracting those people and doesn't realize the pattern. I think one of the main theme is that they all, of course, are seeking this happiness, but because there's a lot of, we have a lot of denial and distractions and not communicating and not being honest with yourself of what you need or what you, you know, you have a lot of illusions or fantasies walking the actual reality. And so they have all these fantasies of, you know, oh, the parents want to separate and then their lives will be so much better. They'll move to a new place, they'll meet new people. The reality is, you know, they're lonely, especially the mother is lonely. They don't want, they keep denying. Neither of the parents want to ever admit that they're divorced, which in all intents and purposes they are. Everyone keeps saying it, but they refuse to admit that they're getting a divorce because that reality just isn't pleasant to think about. So they prefer the fantasy of, we want the good things of kind of a fresh start without the other things that come along with that. With Helen, at one point, she has this, she's feeling like a fraud personally, inwardly, but she won't express it to her family for fear of then seeming worse off, unhappy, which is something that the family just can't handle. The family cannot handle unhappiness, cannot handle drama, cannot handle issues. So no one ever brings it up. And that's probably something they got used to, probably growing up. But at one point, Philip Seymour Hoffman is a character in the movie. Alan, he is this thing that gets him off. It's calling random people. If it's a woman, he tries to ask them questions about what they're wearing or whatnot, and then that arouses him. And he ends up just calling Helen at the perfect time when Helen's in her darkest, most depressed situation. And he ends up just like, he doesn't know who it is, but he just talks shit to her. And then she feels like, oh, wow, this guy's, he's the one person that actually sees through my BS. This is a turn on. And then so she becomes obsessed with him, and then she keeps calling him. He keeps hanging up because his thing is just calling people and hanging up. He, and so he, be careful what you wish for basically, because now he actually, he's a very lonely guy too, and feels like- And he's been pursuing her. Pursuing her. Outside of the calling. Exactly, lived in the same building. So in his mind, he has these ideas of getting to know her or getting with her, but then when it actually happens and she wants him to come over, then he just doesn't know what to do, he's frozen. So she, they don't know what each other look like. Well, she doesn't. And eventually he's like, I want you to come over, I want you to come over. He eventually comes over, not what she expects at all, and goes poorly. She asks him to leave, but that's kind of, again, the disappointment of her expectation of this man who's going to be like all the other men she's been with, but also is real and not superficial because she talks about with her sister. That's one time where she's a little honest with her sister, where she says, oh, I'm just with all these very beautiful men, she's like, but so superficial and I feel empty. So maybe she's hoping that this guy will complete her, but in actuality, in reality- I mean, I don't know. I don't think that she was hoping that this guy would have complete her. I think that was testament to the issues that she personally has because she has the self loathing. And so just as she was talking about how she's a nothing or nobody, she gets a call from some random stranger to validating, saying the exact same thing, which validates her personal feelings, right? In her distorted, unhealthy, I guess, mind. Yeah, perception of, yeah. Yeah, her unhealthy perception of herself. She feels validated and she likes it when someone validates her negative ideas of herself, which I think is kind of normal. Even though people don't necessarily consciously seek that out, I do think that people consciously seek out people who treat them the way that they feel about themselves. So if you feel like you are worthless, then you're gonna most likely attract and be attracted to someone who treats you the way that you feel, very badly. Even though you know, like, you will subconsciously understand that I'm not enjoying this at all, but at the same time you want it and you won't understand why it, why. So I think that was what was going on there. The whole movie I find is that it depicts how people, all people are looking for happiness in whatever form it comes. But I think there's this superficiality to it in the world as we know it today. What is happiness exactly? Looking at the way that the world is structured right now, work-wise, you have to get a job, you have to get money, and then pay for your apartment, right? All of these things have made it so that happiness is never anything that is internal. It's more materialistic. And so people then pit their happiness, the yardstick for happiness are things like, how successful are you? You got a book deal? Check, you're happy. You have the perfect home with your perfect husband and your perfect kids, perfect. If you don't have these things, you're married. You got, you're married for like 40 years. Okay, check, you're all good. You're good, there's nothing wrong here. So those things are tangibles. And I think that's how, that's the world we live in really, we live in a world of tangibles. And so people then neglect themselves. And I think that is, this movie is a representation of that. Because when you see Trish and Helen, they go to dinner. And they're always, and they're just kind of like, all of them taking stock of, I have this book signing and I'm just so tired. And all of these men are just so into me, you know? Like I'm so pretty and it's so annoying. But you know, life is so hard, but I'm sure you're good. Oh no, I'm struggling, but you know, no, actually I'm not struggling. I am married to my psychiatrist husband and my three kids and my beautiful house. Like, I'm really, really happy, life is perfect, but Joy, oh Joy, she's a lost cause. Yeah, remembering it now is a nice detail. We're right at the beginning of the dinner scene, they're like, oh, this place is terrible. I was like, well, Joy recommended it. Yeah, they say all of these things, but then meanwhile they go home and the author Helen is upset, you right? She's, she's paging through her, one of her books about childhood rape. And she's reading it, she's like, I'm a fraud. I don't even know anything about rape. I've never been raped. Oh God, life would be so much better if I'd been raped. You know, then I'd be authentic, you know what I mean? So this is the same person who's very happy about her successful career, right? You have Trish who hasn't had carnal knowledge with her husband for a long time. We've discovered this because her husband, the psychiatrist, you know, is sharing this information with her, with his psychiatrist. And then on top of that, in the home, the kid is upset at one point and she's like, oh, you know, he's just upset, like he wants attention. That's it, just ignore him. Your own kid, ignore your own kid who's low. He's depressed. Well, is anything the matter? I don't want to talk about it. Ignore him. He's just doing it for attention. He thinks he'll be impressed, as if. It's a family that is a victim, like so many other people, like all of us really to a degree of looking at happiness outwardly at material things, right? How long, the longer you've been married, is the happier you should be. That's why people have these milestones of like 10 years. 20 years, oh wow, then that must mean, even though in reality, for a lot of people, it's like, yeah, but I was unhappy for 18 of the 20 years I've been married. So there's no like, but they want to, a lot of people, the mother and father, probably want to stay not divorced because then they'll lose all that perceived happiness. But if you separate, but you're still counting up the numbers, right? So that's how people look at things. And then like Trish with her, we got a house, boom, there's a tangible material thing. Okay, well you must have the certain level of happiness to have that house in this area. Then you have a husband who's got an esteemed job and then you've got kids, right? Then in actuality, yeah, the marriage is not very, they don't get intimate. Later it comes out that the husband is a pedophile. So everything falls apart, right? Yeah, it's the whole like, if you're not happy now with nothing, you're not gonna be happy with stuff. Yeah, yeah, and I mean, they continue this facade of happiness, right? Even in the last scene, they're having dinner, all of them together in the mother's house. The mom and dad have separated, they're living in the house. But they're still together, which may be to say, oh, you know, but it's that thing of like, yeah, but they're on separate sides of the table and yeah. Yeah, but they don't live together, right? And so now they're having dinner. And I remember one of them, I don't remember who said it, something like, you know, where there's life, there's hope. It just kind of consolidated the whole movie when I felt like the theme of the movie, that just, I refuse to acknowledge and grapple with the fact of me being deeply, deeply lonely, me feeling, being deeply sad. I refuse to see that. I think it is nice to say that where there's life, there's hope, of course. But in a setting like that, where no one is actually dealing with issues, I don't think there's really any hope because hope comes along if you're actually willing to get through the tough stuff. But the family isn't willing to get through the tough stuff, nor are they willing to support each other through it. So you have a bunch of these people that are also sad and in agony and don't even realize number one that they're causing each other pain. Also on top of that, not realizing that they're both in the same boat. And if they were just honest, if they just unpack, especially because they're family, you don't think that family is a place where you can be vulnerable and open. But this, it ceases to be when all of you are lying to yourselves, right? And lying to each other too. It's similar for me of the, at least you have your health. Well, having health doesn't do you anything if everything else in your life is a lie or a denial. Because then you're just dragging it out longer. Health plus honesty, self-honesty and self-knowledge and the knowledge of the world and your environment. Then health adds to that. But health on its own, I don't think means anything if the rest of your life is a cage. The other relationship that was really interesting to me was the relationship between Alan and that girl who murders the guy who- The dormant. The dormant. Kiss me again. But that was just an act. I let him kiss me one last time and I grabbed hold of his neck and I twisted it backward. There you are. Thank you. I'm gonna say self-defense to be honest because she had just been raped by him. I found their relationship to be so sad. For a long time, she's been interested in him. He has not been interested in her whatsoever. And she's a heavier lady as is he. And he has a deep sense of self-loathing for himself. Self-loathing, right? And so he sees her basically kind of like a reflection of himself, right? And so he's not going to want to pursue a relationship with someone who, a female version of himself basically as a lot of people do, right? Like you don't want to, you find yourself repelled by people who remind you of the things you don't like about yourself. Even though you don't necessarily conscious, if you aren't conscious, even though you're not, you may not be consciously aware of that. They end up, you know, in the end after being rejected by their peers basically, that's the thing that they're, the thing they have in common is that sense of being rejected by their peers. And so this is the thing that actually draws them together. After Helen tells Alan to leave, she's not his type, right? Because she'd invited him over after the call, but then discovers that you're not the hot guy that I usually go for. This isn't gonna work, please leave, you're not my type. Rejected goes to that girl's place, whose name I can't remember right now. He goes there knowing because, you know, she's expressed in many ways, interest, right? Knowing that she's gonna receive him warmly and even though he's not necessarily attracted to him, and they lie in bed together and they go to bed. Nothing happens, nothing, no kind of engagement, engagements occur, they just sleep, right? But there is that comfort that they seek in each other. The thing about that relationship, it made me sad because it's kind of one of those things where people who are rejected are drawn to each other just based on the fact of both you and I are people that are ostracized from our social group. And so that's the thing, that is what forms their relationship. I don't think those kinds of relationships ever worked personally because personally, both of them have that feeling of, they are unhappy about the fact of being so different from their peers. They're unhappy about that. They're unhappy about feeling so awkward all the time and not feeling attractive. They don't like these things about themselves. And so if you're building a relationship on things that both of you dislike about each other, I don't think that's necessarily gonna work. Do you know what I mean? Well, you were saying too that you found it conflicting that the most sympathetic character arguably in the movie or one of was the pedophile that. Yeah. I think they do it well and it's intentional, right? Because he's the most open and communicative person basically in the movie with his kid, his kid's friend. He's very accepting, very respectful of the kid's questions, you know? Give his son space when he's working through some things and then trying to figure things out. And overall, generally a more present parent. It comes out that he's a pedophile. After that happens, the kid asks the dad about what happened, like what it is that he did to the kids and he explains it. I felt that that was just insane. That is where, okay, the good parenting stopped. Yep, yep. Where he's telling, describing to his kid what he did to his kid's friends, basically, or classmates, but before that, and this is the thing that is so tough, I think, as a viewer because this is the guy, this is the one person in the movie that I actually felt like, oh, you know what I mean? Even as he was going through to therapy and sharing dreams he has of murdering people in a park, I was still like, well, he's going to therapy and he's trying to work it out. But here he is, having a great relationship with his kid and really being so open and patient with the kid definitely does not believe in how the wife treats the kid. Like when Trish is like, oh, just ignore him. He's pretending like he says he's depressed, but just ignoring who wants attention. And he's like clearly no. Of course, we got to talk to this kid and does go and talk to his kid, you know? And when the kid is obviously at that age where they're asking about certain birds and bees kinds of questions, he's super responsive, you know, and very careful about what he's saying and also very understanding of the fact that this kid is getting a lot of very bad information from his classmates. And I think as a parent, you obviously at a certain age, you know that your kids are going to get exposed to the birds and the bees kinds of stuff and you have to become the filter, right? That actually lays everything out in a way that is actually real and true and it's going to help the kid adjust or adapt to becoming a teen, basically, right? And to growing up. The dad does that really well. And I found that the scenes where the dad and the kid were talking, I found them to be so sweet, you know? Just so sweet. People are complicated. There could be someone who does the most horrendous thing in the movie, you know, more respectful, more understanding otherwise. Yeah, I think that that was kind of testament to, in life, you made a lot of people, right? Who someone seemed really sweet or just like maybe they seem like they have to act together. You know what I mean? But you don't really know what's happening behind the scenes. Yeah, I think that movie, especially with... Their shadows, their hiding, their dark side. Yeah, I think the whole movie is basically doing that all the time. As you're engaging with people, the reality is there's so much that we don't present to each other. There's so much more that you don't know. And a lot of the times we're kind of like comparing ourselves to each other or just thinking, oh, you know, this person is a very respectful man, a respectable man. Wow, I'm very impressed or you know what I mean? Or, oh my God, why am I such a failure? Why is this person doing so much better? Why can't I just like, you know? It reminds me of the story I think Bill Hader tells the comedian where he was going in to an audition and either him or the other guy had a bunch of props. And then, you know, he's, so I say Bill Hader was on the props and he looks over at the other guy and he's like, oh man, this guy doesn't even need props. What am I doing? I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna totally screw this up. I have all this extra stuff and he doesn't even need it. What, you know, he's got it in the bag. The guys looking over like, that guy's got props. What in the hell am I gonna do? He's got it for sure. He's prepared. He's going above and beyond. But it's because we, so that's the thing is like, we have this, both people are thinking, oh, well, I'm clearly, I don't know what I'm doing. The other person, no one knows what they're doing. We're all making up as we go. We're all trying our best. And one last thing I'll mention about when we, like it's when Joy first gets the job helping refugees learn English. There's a bunch of strikers. She walks through it first day and they're all calling her a scab and it hurts her feelings. Cause yeah, it seems like a derogatory thing to say. And actually, you know, it's one of those things that reminds me of like the power of and the effects that, that things can have, like words can have or actions on. If you're trying to win people over, then just insulting people and then people don't even know what your cause is or what's going on, you're going to turn them away simply because you're being rude to these people, you know? And it's, it's kind of like, yeah, you can understand their, their frustration at strike breakers because, you know, people in the office like to be like, you're not a scav, you're a strike breaker. It's the same, it means the same thing, but people don't like to feel that they're a bad person. Everything that someone does, they want to believe it's, so they'll just change the language that helps them feel better about themselves, which is interesting. But I also found interesting that, yeah, again, it's one of those things where if, you know, really try hard to not alienate other people that could potentially want to see your point of view. Cause once you do that, you've already upset people and then it's hard. And in the end of the movie, she ends up kind of feeling more sympathetic towards people striking cause she lives through the job, but that doesn't always happen. And you're off to the wrong foot, off on the wrong foot, if you immediately just start insulting people that have no idea what's going on. It happens all the time, especially on the internet. Exactly, like you're insulting people who, because they don't believe in your cause. And so it's like, okay, if you want to believe- Or they're just doing something that is against what you believe, but they don't even know that it's what, it's against what you believe. So you haven't communicated that. So they're just doing something accidentally upsetting you. So, you know, they didn't even know, can't be upset with people that they don't even know that they're doing something wrong in your eyes. Yes, but yeah, that was some of the stuff that we found in the movie Happiness. Yeah. What would you guys think? Yeah, please comment down below and share your thoughts on our thoughts or just share any thoughts. Yeah, any thoughts, Paul. Yeah. Recommend some movies. Yeah. But yeah, that you'd like us to watch and then comment on. But yeah, until next time, though. Answer out.