Michael Haneke is one of my favorite filmmakers, but I’m first to admit that the man recycles similar themes, and displays them with a distinct narrative style. (That’s a nice way of saying he makes very slow, challenging films.) I don’t see this as a fault, however, as I have yet to see a bad Michael Haneke film. The man’s insistence on showing the worst aspects of human nature (through an uncomfortably detached lens) frequently results in deliberate, thrilling, wildly unique films.
Evidence of Haneke’s detached narrative style is clear for anyone who sees Happy End and later attempts to describe the film. This is because Happy End spells nothing out. It places us into the middle of a story, where we are forced to reach conclusions on our own. Haneke isn’t interested in blatantly conveying messages in his movies. He observes people doing curious things, and asks us to judge if we dare.
The film is about the Laurent family, who all live together in a massive home in Calais. Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is the aging patriarch suffering through dementia, loudly wishing for life to be over. Anne (Isabelle Huppert) is Georges daughter, a career-driven woman who runs the family’s lucrative construction company. Pierre (Franz Rogowski) is Anne’s troubled adult son who may be responsible for a significant accident on a construction site. Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz) is Georges’ son, a doctor who is feigning happiness with his younger wife and newborn child. Eve (Fantine Harduin) is Thomas’ teenage daughter and the character that binds everyone together. Eve could also very well be the most troubled Laurent of them all, for reasons best explored in the film itself.
Happy End is, in many ways, an encapsulation of family dysfunction as seen through the eyes of a child. When you’re a kid, you don’t have the full context of family problems, but you’re clued in on things. And troubling things happen in Happy End. There are suicide attempts, car accidents, serious injuries, physical assaults, and salacious affairs, yet none of this is shown directly. Haneke passes over these moments and instead shows us the aftermath of such events. We watch people discuss why they have done what they’ve done with an air of entitled detachment. It’s a detachment that suggests that the family cares about such troubles for roughly five minutes, then never thinks about them again.
A lot of the detachment in the film has to do with social media. Haneke, certainly no stranger to showing the detriments of emerging technologies, uses Happy End to rally against social media platforms. Specifically for Happy End, Haneke seems concerned about the fact that everyone has video cameras in their pockets, and their constant use of those cameras is helping detach people from real emotion. People have a tendency to film something, and because they’re viewing it through their screen (even though they are mere physical feet away from the action), they fail to comprehend the consequences of what they’re filming. This is why the internet is full of gruesome fights, brutal fails, and worse. There is a certain level of detachment that comes from filming something particularly nasty. “It’s on my phone, it isn’t real.” Don’t mistake what I’m saying as an absolute. I film things with my phone all the time, but there is a specific group of people who enjoy filming something detrimental and uploading it for views and likes. And it is those people that Michael Haneke wants to examine.
Let me put it another, clearer way: when Happy End was done, I sat in the theater through the credits, wondering if I liked what I saw. I knew I couldn’t figure it all out yet, but I wondered. Now it’s six days later, and while I know I enjoyed the film, I’m desperately wondering when I’ll have the opportunity to see it again. And, perhaps, again. There are maybe three movies a year that evoke that kind of reaction out of me, and Happy End is one of them. I’ll leave you with a question, one that I would love to ask little Eve Laurent: if likes, favorites, retweets, comments, views, and upvotes did not exist, would you still use social media? I believe Eve would say no, but would she understand what that implies? B+
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I do want to see this. After all, I like Michael Haneke's work and even if it's a minor Haneke film. It is clear that it's still more interesting than every other film. I'll watch him make a movie about someone taking a shit and it will fascinate me. That's how good he is. Plus, I think he is a master provocateur as he just wants to challenge and get people to ask big questions. That is a true artist.
ReplyDeleteYou've tapped into something that is so true: a minor Haneke film is still better than most other films out there. I lose sight of that sometimes, but it's an important level of perspective to remember. Like all of Haneke's films, I imagine I will grow to love Happy End even more with time. It's a thinker, to be sure. Can't wait to hear what you think of it.
DeleteI echo your thoughts, though I'm a little less enthusiastic about this one. Haneke is among my favorite modern film-makers (on the subject of which, have you seen anything by Nuri Blige Ceylan?) but having seen this weeks ago I still can't make heads or tails of it. Eve watching the interaction between Thomas and Hille Perl's nameless musician was a priceless moment that really put into perspective how incisive and well-directed Happy End was; but was that enough? Zvyagintsev's 'Loveless' did the same a couple days ago: Tight realisation without any real room for the audience to breathe. And while I appreciate works like this, that seem designed with a serrated edge set to frighten off anyone unwilling to really commit themselves to the craft and subtext of every decision, on and behind the screen, I couldn't really connect with it in any meaningful way. Intellectual motivation is one thing, and Happy End was so deliciously Hanekeian in places it made me grin, but that just wasn't enough.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand I caught You Were Never Really Here yesterday and despite that flick's grim, unapologetically committed sense of storytelling (steering through the kind of absolute attention to detail that's always been the cornerstone of Ramsay's work) I really liked it. I had a conversation with my mum, who I'd seen it with since I was back from uni, on the way home about the growing divide between pathetically clean popcorn cinema that spells everything out and this reactionary wave of independant features that seem to have drifted too far the other way. I get a feeling that everything can become so overconsidered, on polar sides of the spectrum, that is crushes all tangible emotion.
And even Phantom Thread, which was at one point by far my favorite film of last year, was overtaken by Call Me By Your Name in part because I felt Anderson's approach was so rigidly settled into this mindset. For all its beautiful, characterful flourishes and stunning dramatic set-pieces Guadagnino's work touched me so much more. I get the legion of reasons Anderson pursued such a story, and touched it with such an assured tone, but I'm worried that mature directors like him, known for pushing limits, will give way to the burden of making good movies, rather than just making movies.
I've rambled but the idea stands: It's a delicate situation at the moment :p Nice review, also :')
Thanks for this comment. These are all fair thoughts. Happy End is very Hanekeian, to an extreme. Of all his films, I would agree that he gives us the least amount to hang on to in Happy End. It was very sparse filmmaking. But I will be interested to revisit it.
DeleteI can’t wait to see You Were Never Really Here (and dive into Ceylan’s work).
Haneke is hit and miss for me. This sounds like it might come off a bit preachy about social media? Still, I think it's something I would certainly watch.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely isn't preachy about social media at all, sorry if I framed it that way in my review. I think social media is only mentioned once in the film, in regards to Facebook chats. But social media is not mocked or ridiculed verbally at all. Haneke makes no visual statement indicting social media, but rather, he questions the way some people use it. If that makes sense. Still, if Haneke is hit or miss for you, I'd have to assume this one would be a miss. It really is for die hard Haneke fans.
DeleteI think the film has lots of good intentions, but the ideas (of which there are many) seem to be mostly semi-formed. The story kind of needed to be a tv-show, didn't it? I'm glad I watched and Fantine Harduin was probably given the most interesting role, I wasn't sure how to feel about her character. Happy End dos feel topical and I agree the film questions social media-also explored in the horror-comedy Tragedy Girls (2017)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm with you here. To be fair, I do need to see it again, because whenever I see a new Haneke film, it always feels so sparse to me. Have to see it at least twice to wrap my head around it. But I agree, a lot of the ideas here seemed semi-formed and needlessly opaque.
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