"Depending on different points of view, mass media are either considered the objective mirror of society – and, therefore, do nothing but reflect its reality – or the violence constantly represented by them inevitably becomes directly responsible for the increase of violence we encounter in our daily lives. It is natural to wonder whether the chicken or the egg came first, and the fact that the question does not have a definitive answer actually justifies both positions, each of which can be considered correct."
In these undeniable words, taken from the few pages of a contribution included in the essay La Violenza allo Specchio (which I take this opportunity to recommend), there is much to understand the Haneke thought regarding the media and the dissemination of images in the contemporary world (a similar discourse was already applicable to Benny's Video, or to 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, the latter film, for me, among the best of the director born in Munich).
Mass digitalization in today's context of technological dominance in the hyper-globalized society has produced the real change (or rather, it is better to say, evolution) of the species; and, again speaking of points of view, generated the monsters whose actions we witness today.
The chicken or the egg. Is globalization what pushed the digitalization process further, or did the latter create the seeds of the former? Purely personal speculations.
Haneke's latest film, presented at the seventieth edition of the Cannes Film Festival – from which, for the first time since the early '00s, it emerged without awards, by the way – is also the first I had the pleasure of watching in the cinema. Certainly, it is difficult to talk about Haneke from unexplored perspectives, as he is one of the few truly influential and almost unanimously celebrated auteurs in elite cinema. As mentioned, this is not, however, his most loved work; despite this, within it, there's all the Haneke you can seek. Frustration, ineptitude, meanness, hypocrisy, the normal and ordinary inhumanity of the upper-middle class located in the strategic area of Calais, which cannot but have a high symbolic value for the well-known events of recent years.
One cannot forget how Amour, Haneke's previous production, was released in 2012. And since then, there have been just a few changes. Who knows, the Mayans might not have been completely wrong in announcing, with a few millennia's advance, the end of the world as we knew it.
In Happy End, therefore, the umpteenth gallery of well-off monstrosities is served, seasoned with the usual, extremely detached anthropologist's gaze we've come to expect from the Austrian auteur-director. Nothing new under the European sky and in the filmography of Our Man. Even for the first time, characters from the past return, without, however, being able to talk about a sequel in any way. And it's not even about mannerism, this needs clarification. Rather, I like to think of it as a small summa of the Haneke oeuvre. Which, on the other hand, having reached a no longer green age, not being as prolific as an Allen or an Eastwood, might not have much cinema ahead (touch wood, of course).
At the extremes, I will always remember the two main figures of this work: Eve, the young girl with an angelic face, who loses her mother and presents herself as the only tender face not yet completely detached and, simultaneously, as the most disturbing product of image voyeurism, forming the shared reality, more real than real; a direct descendant of the unforgettable dear old Benny mentioned above; and the grandfather, Georges (widower of Anne/Emmanuelle Riva, indeed), a suicidal aspirant with severe signs of senile dementia, played by the tireless and immense eighty-seven-year-old Jean-Luis Trintignant. Nothing to take away from the usual, impeccable Isabelle Huppert and Kassovitz (who finally manages to give a semblance of sense to his recent career), but the film certainly centers around the two aforementioned, representatives of two generations so distant yet the only ones, in such a context, to somehow manage, albeit not in an orthodox way, to communicate.
The Haneke Happy End doesn't hit hard on the face, mind, and stomach like Funny Games or The Piano Teacher, it doesn't have the visual and allusive historical force of The White Ribbon (an absolute masterpiece of the director, in my opinion), it is not the theoretical, intangible, and mysterious expression of Cache. It is, in short, not his best film. But it remains an experience, as in all his filmography, of interest far above average. Always. A cinema, that of the Austrian, that is not conceived, produced, and completed to please, not in the classic sense of the term. But it is a cinema to which, during and after the viewing, you cannot remain indifferent. And, above all, a way of looking and filming that belongs only and exclusively to its author. A comparison with Bresson has always flashed in my mind. Not by chance, Au Hasard Balthazar is cited by Haneke as his favorite film, and others slightly later (Lancelot and Guinevere, for example). But Bresson did not deal with the bourgeoisie and the centrality of the spiritual issue was constant and, to quote Paul Schrader, of transcendence. In Haneke, nothing of this kind, nothing that touches on the religious theme. But always a ruthless, icy, distant look (and here in Happy End more than ever) on behavior, ugliness, the nature of man. No judgment, only observation, reasoning, thought, reflection.
In contrast, as is always the case with the true greats, there are several who've been and continue to be influenced by him; one name above all: Lanthimos.
By the way, I don't know why, but I could see a couple pair up between the present Eve and Martin from The Killing of a Sacred Deer. In a kind of soft cinematic version of Stewie and Penelope.
Although it wasn't released in the very last days of the year, and although we're already well into 2018, the Haneke Happy End is the best way to conclude the 2017 film year. At least personally (in fact, it was the last film I saw in the cinema in the past year).
And with that final vein of mocking black humor that never spoils.
Loading comments slowly