The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (M, 97 mins) Directed by Nathan Price ****½
I’ve picked up Mark Manson’s best-selling book a few times and even flicked through the first pages. But I’ve never quite got as far as giving the nice people at Unity Books my money.
I think it’s the ironically trying-hard-to-sound-cool pretension of that F*ck in the title, that has put me off. God knows I love swearing and regularly unleash a torrent of profanity that could make a wharfie blush. But when someone tries to commercialise swearing by using it to flog a book, I suddenly turn prim as a nun.
But, I reckon the next time I see Manson’s book, I will buy it. Now that I’ve seen the film of the book and spent time in his company, I like Manson and what he has to say.
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The Subtle Art has sold in the millions. It remained on The New York Times best-seller lists for more than three years and continues to fly off the shelves in around the world. This film should give it a healthy nudge too.
The book’s subtitle is “The Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life”. Which gives a fairer indication of Manson’s advice, which is to stop worrying about the stuff you can’t control – but also to pick the things you really do care about – and devote every f*ck you have to achieving them.
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Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, features prominently in the documentary of the same name.
Along the way, Manson tears down the “self-esteem” craze among self-help writers and educators, pointing out what should have been bloody obvious for decades. That “self-esteem” that is not founded on actual achievement is a recipe for narcissism, entitlement and misery.
Manson counsels us to embrace our losses, remind ourselves that – no matter what Instagram tells us – almost everybody feels like a failure and is struggling with something right now. Also, you’re going to die soon anyway, so quit trying to impress people – and just do useful things instead.
All of which pleases me very much.
The Subtle Art – the film – is a brisk, often very funny and always likeable trip through the key points of the book.
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Even self-help industry cynics may well come away believing that Mark Manson is at least an authentic and intelligent contributor to it.
After a mildly hallucinatory opening flourish, New Zealand-born director Nathan Price settles into a rhythm of intercutting interviews with Manson with animation, cinema archive and a series of dream-like sequences that reek of “’90s music video” – but in a really enjoyable way. The film also co-opts the true story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier on the Philippines who refused to believe that World War II was over. Somehow, it works beautifully.
Listen. Watching a documentary about a self-help book was not big on my list of things to do this week. But, now that I have seen The Subtle Art, I am impressed – and I like Manson and his blunt assessment of how our minds actually work.
If you are one of the millions who own the book, I expect that you will enjoy the film a lot. And if, like me, you are a cynic about the entire self-help industry, then you may well come away believing that Manson, at least, is an authentic and intelligent contributor to it. Recommended.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck begins screening in select New Zealand cinemas from the evening of January 11.