I viewed Haneke's entire filmography back when it was all available to stream on Netflix, and I believe he's the most important filmmaker alive today. Even his movies that are my least favorite (71 Fragments, Time of the Wolf) have scenes that are mesmerizing, moments of resonance that linger with you long after the credits have rolled. Because I can't say the same for Happy End, I worry that this film might be his most unremarkable.
Certainly, like all of Haneke's films, Happy End is beautifully shot, realistically acted, and has enough suspense, tension, and thought-provoking insight to keep the mind active. A scene late in the film between the patriarch (Jean-Louis Trintignant, doing a variation of his role in Amour) and his granddaughter (Fantine Harduin) is a standout; for a moment, it seems as though a heartfelt interrogation between a man at the end of his life and a woman at the beginning of hers might reveal some secret about the ultimate meaning of living, though of course it turns out that neither of them has any idea what it all means. This scene intrigued me, but it still left me disappointed.
Likewise with the climax, which, I think, attempts to pull off something similar to what he accomplished with Funny Games. Funny Games was ultimately a critique of the spectacle of violent entertainment, frequently asking the viewer to pause and ask, "Why the hell did I pay to see this? What enjoyment or edification was I expecting from seeing a family get tortured?" It seems to me that Happy End hints at something comparable at the dinner party towards the end, when the camera moves away from the suffering of these miserable, self-hating, filthy rich, and terribly boring people in order to briefly highlight the lives of refugees who are trying to escape to the economic opportunities of the UK. Here Haneke seems to ask, Why'd you pay to see the haute bourgeoisie simmer over their self-inflicted "problems" when there are real things at stake in the world? All the same, this jab is perhaps too subtle and ultimately stings of the "contempt for the viewer" that so many detractors have always accused Haneke of having but which I've never actually been able to detect. If that's the case, why make this expensive-looking movie at all? Why not make a different film--either one that more consciously highlights the refugee crisis, or one that more scathingly indicts the chamber drama genre?
Haneke trains his incisive gaze on many interesting issues throughout Happy End--psychopathy, greed, social media, suicide, depression, euthanasia, immigration, class conflict, corporate liability--but what he ultimately stirs up is a lot more tired, a lot less insightful, and far more "meh" than anything he's ever produced before.
