The Reason For Art and Good Fortune

Art is defined in the way you can relate to it. Rather than just be entertainment, cinema is a way for us to see our lives through a different lens, even being able to make sense of our own lives through a fictional story. Aziz Ansari's Good Fortune was a very important movie for this time in my life, which is the reason I enjoyed it so much.

I'm at a point in my life where I'm somewhat uncertain of my future or place in the world after many years of having the childish... I don't want to say delusion, it feels too harsh... we'll say the childish dream of being able to set out on what I want to do and easily achieving it, because that's what were taught can happen as children. The American Dream, if you will. Sometimes, this doesn't always work out, or maybe just not in the way you may have imagined, and you have to keep marching forward. Seeing this movie felt quite gratifying, almost as a sign that this doesn't last forever, everybody feels this way at one point or another and there is a way out.

To be honest, I didn't find this movie very funny, most likely because of how hard it hit me. However, I do think the comedy was very important for two reasons. One being the obvious, that all these comedic actors would've had a much harder time if this was a straightforward drama, but also the comedy works very well to lighten the mood. If it wasn't present, not only would this movie end up feeling quite bland, but also far too existential. Of course it was these things, just masked quite well under the veil of comedy.

Partway through this movie, I felt as if I could see exactly where this was going. Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) gave Arj (Aziz Ansari) all he could ever want to convince him that money doesn't buy happiness. I assumed he would simply end up lonely, despite his eternal riches and will realise that no matter how much money he has, he'd only be happy if he was surrounded by friends. Of course, I thought I'd hate how this ends. This movie did go with this cliche in part, however it quickly pivoted to a much more noble and admirable commentary on the ever growing economical divide all over the world.

Throughout this movie, they tend to take some big 'eat the rich' and loneliness swings in this movie, which I think definitely do pay off. This is a story that just as well could've been told in shallow waters, they could've just scraped the surface of the existentialism and lack of purpose. However, they went all the way into the deep end and tackled these very hard hitting topics head on without fear of being 'too much', especially for a comedy movie.

While his movie may not have hit absolutely everything it was trying to achieve, it conveyed many of its core points in a very admirable way, still managing to keep it light at times, especially with the amount of existential points there were.

Stripping away all the comedy, this is a very deep and heartfelt story that I'm sure Aziz Ansari has been wanting to create for a while, which I can very much admire and relate to on so many levels, as I'm sure so many others can. I just hope people can see through the comedy into the much deeper subject matter at play. However, in the words of Andre 3000 "y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance".