Willl Smith is Gaining Favor

I'm not a big Will Smith fan. I've seen almost all of his major releases from the blockbuster, Independence Day, to independent film, Six Degrees of Separation and the one thing that connects all of the characters I've seen him play is a simplicity of goals. To put it bluntly, there isn't a lot of depth to Will Smith's acting or the characters he portrays. Admittedly, I've yet to see Michael Mann's Ali so Smith's range might be greater than what I give him credit for. But until I am convinced otherwise, Smith sits pretty squarely in the middle of my imaginary, highly subjective, spectrum of good and bad actors.

Until now.

Will Smith, when being interviewed by Aint it Cool News about his upcoming movie, the Pursuit of Happyness, said this:

There's a combination of simplicity and depth. When you can get that in a movie,
it's so basic and so simple that a five year old can understand what's going on. Yet it's still so deep and textured and complex that you can talk about it with great minds for hundreds of hours. For me, the Pursuit of Happyness is so connected to the idea of why America works. This is the only country on the face of the earth where Chris Gardner can exist. That wouldn't happen anywhere else on earth. The hope for that doesn't even exist anywhere else on earth. That you're homeless, that you have $23, and without killing anybody, without oil, without an army that you go strictly based on an idea that you have in your mind. And you hold onto that idea and you create a multi-million-dollar empire. That doesn't happen anywhere else.

The idea that America thrives because that is the idea and the promise that we sell to the rest of the world. In practice, there's a little difficulty, but the promise of it is what inspires great minds to come here. The poor, tired, huddled masses, they're not just coming here for food and a house, they're coming here for an idea, and their idea is being murdered in other places. This is a country that says, We believe in nurturing ideas. That is so the center of humanity.

Although I haven't seen the movie - but intend to brave the sea of chatting and coughing and plan on enduring the seatback-kicking of the modern day movie-going experience and am excited to do so - I suspect that Smith's portrayal of Chris Gardner will be sufficiently complex and well-rounded. Beyond that, Smith is moving up my arbitrarily arranged chart of "actors who gain my respect for reason X" for having said what he said about America.

It's easy to find a self-important actor who will decry America as an imperialistic theocracy in love with oil and hell bent on robbing its citizenry of freedom, happiness, and pleasure. But it's a whole different experience to read a quote like the one Smith left for us here.

America IS the best country in the world and as subjective as the term 'best' might be when it's not contextualized properly, and in spite of our many woes I can still say it with a great deal of confidence. I even welcome debate about that sentiment.

America loves you even if you hate her.