There's a growing trend towards vague ('different') overblown, Award orientated movies. This addition to the Michael Haneke stable, examines the lives of a business woman's family, her Dr Brother and his dangerously disturbed 13 yr old daughter. It's more likely to please audiences who congratulate themselves on being able to 'appreciate' items that try so hard at being 'arty', they simply end up being unpopular with mainstream audiences. Being 'different' requires more than simplistic, overlong, single camera takes - that have said all they have to say within the first 40 seconds but, go on for many minutes to make sure you got the 'message'.
Happy End has an existentialist oriented script that most likely involved a scant amount of pages but even so, outstays its welcome by up to half an hour. Good performances (as these certainly are) are not enough to save this somewhat laboured expose' of the self absorbed business folk it examines - especially when the director's camera also endlessly tracks actors as they walk from one distant place to the next and back again - simply padding out vast spaces of lose scripting.
This could be called imitation Bergman without the well crafted, intense, emotional involvements that drew the viewer into his style of intimate personal examinations. Now days, he's been given over to a new wave of movie makers who have discovered they can cheaply make movies by using fewer cameras and virtually eliminating the 'vital' editing process by up to 85%.
The viewer can also partly play this game - by using the modern viewing devises to save themselves wasted time by playing back half the padded content in 2 x speed... losing little or no story in the process. In this particular case it could be that Mr Haneke may have come to his retirement years - even though he obviously still enjoys working. For dedicated Haneke fans only.
Happy End has an existentialist oriented script that most likely involved a scant amount of pages but even so, outstays its welcome by up to half an hour. Good performances (as these certainly are) are not enough to save this somewhat laboured expose' of the self absorbed business folk it examines - especially when the director's camera also endlessly tracks actors as they walk from one distant place to the next and back again - simply padding out vast spaces of lose scripting.
This could be called imitation Bergman without the well crafted, intense, emotional involvements that drew the viewer into his style of intimate personal examinations. Now days, he's been given over to a new wave of movie makers who have discovered they can cheaply make movies by using fewer cameras and virtually eliminating the 'vital' editing process by up to 85%.
The viewer can also partly play this game - by using the modern viewing devises to save themselves wasted time by playing back half the padded content in 2 x speed... losing little or no story in the process. In this particular case it could be that Mr Haneke may have come to his retirement years - even though he obviously still enjoys working. For dedicated Haneke fans only.