“Our most consequential choices ? are often shaped by how we imagine our future regrets,” Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert points out in his fascinating book “Stumbling on Happiness.”
That could serve as a tagline for Zach Braff?s latest movie “The Last Kiss.” I recently went to see it even though I knew it would probably put me in a bad mood ? just like Braff?s previous movie.
Braff wrote and directed 2004?s “Garden State,” in which he also starred as a 20-something underachiever who returns home for his mother?s funeral and wakes up from a long depression by falling in love.
Seeing “Garden State” depressed me because I knew a beguiling, optimistic girl who looked just like Natalie Portman would not bump into me on my way out of the theater and transform my life into a never-ending series of blissful moments.
But movies are about escaping reality, so I took a chance on “The Last Kiss.”
Braff only acts in this film, which also uses an improbably ideal woman to move the plot. This time it?s in the form of the dark-eyed Kim (Rachel Bilson), a 20-year-old siren who tempts Michael (Braff) to leave his newly pregnant girlfriend of three years.
Michael and three of his friends worry about turning 30, and measure themselves against their past expectations and against each other.
By those standards, Michael?s life ranks high against his friends, but he?s not happy. “I?ve been thinking about my life lately, and everything feels pretty planned out,” Michael says. “There?s no more surprises.”
The emotionally needy Kim senses this. “I could be your last chance at happiness,” she says to Michael, trying to lure him from the car up to her dorm room. Michael resists because he loves his girlfriend, but he wants a different life than the safe but boring future she represents to him. And he fears that he will regret not taking a chance on something that may be much better.
“The Last Kiss” resolves the conflict predictably, but it captures how many of us born during the Nixon and Ford administrations often allow ourselves to be paralyzed by an array of choices.
Gilbert?s “Stumbling on Happiness” attempts to explain how our brains work to help ? or hinder ? how we make those choices in a way that will maximize our happiness.
We must make decisions in the present, but we rely on memory to imagine the consequences our decisions will make. But our memory is selective and our imagination is shaped by our present circumstance, Gilbert says.
And we tend to compare our options and our feelings with the familiar, not the possible ? just like Michael and his friends, who look at each other and conclude the other guys are better off.
Gilbert excels when he illustrates these ideas about the pursuit of happiness, but, like every other writer who tackles the subject, he doesn?t say anything new about the meaning of happiness.
Gilbert also says little about love, the particular form of happiness many of us pursue most ardently.
“The Last Kiss” suggests that individual happiness needs to be sacrificed in order for love to work.
“What you love only matters to you,” another character tells Michael. “It?s what you do to the people you say you love that really matters.”
I?m not entirely sure that?s true. But I?m probably not alone in thinking I might be happy making a life with someone who believes it is.
Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at [email protected].
