Happy End

In accordance with an unwritten agreement with the viewer, a significant part of fictional films respects certain narrative rules. The effect is preceded by the cause, the answer by the question, the end by the beginning. Happy End adapts those deep-rooted rules to its own, topsy-turvy world. ___ The game-like framing of the whole film is brought to our attention by the opening credits. The first words to appear are “the end”. This is followed by the notice “presented by Central Film Rental in Prague”. From a certain moment, the traditional credits are replaced with text written in mirror image and then reversed. Meanwhile, the opening shot of the film is pieced together like a puzzle against the background of text. The resulting image, Vladimír Menšík’s head separated from his torso, then requests our participation with a roguish wink. The filmmakers are fooling around and, at the same time, inviting us to join in. ___ Bedřich justifies all of the crimes that he has committed by judging the whole story within the parameters of a murder ballad according to his own inverted logic. As the narrator of the whole story, he doesn’t allow an alternative interpretation that would make him guilty. His de facto commentary is not in direct conflict with what has been seen, but it denies the generally accepted criteria for what is considered permissible and right. Does Bedřich thus automatically become an unreliable narrator who bends the truth based on his own personal interests? Or is he telling the truth as it exists in his own universe? ___ If formalistic games break the narrative coherence of the story, the objects in the mise-en-scene serve for the comprehensibility of the plot and the characterisation of the characters. The filmmakers also imaginatively play with the soundtrack. Printed words sometimes absurdly describe what we hear (“click-clack”), thus serving the same purpose as intertitles in a silent film, and what we see (“hand”, “head”, “foot”), thus accentuating the attractive nature of some scenes. In all instances, this involves the use of sound in a manner different from what we are generally accustomed to – sound does not complement the information conveyed by the image, but rather duplicates it. These oddities have a comical effect and contribute to the assessment of Happy End as a film whose guiding principle is a purposeful inversion of the logic that we are used to from ordinary films. ___ As in the early years of cinema, the medium of film is used through Happy End in the manner of a fairground attraction for the general public’s entertainment. Several times, the narrative flow is imaginatively suspended and the integrity of the narrative is violated in order to offer us stimuli reminiscent of the aforementioned fairground attractions, arousing wonder or amazement at the possibilities of the medium of film (the graphically depicted dismemberment of the wife, the several minutes of pulling cakes out of a mouth, the jumping out of water). Despite the presence of a simple story, Happy End sometimes resembles a series of attractions from which the first cinema operators compiled their programmes. Nevertheless, the demands placed on the recipients of audiovisual content are incomparably higher than in the era of the cinema of attractions. The alternation of narrative and attraction-based organising principles makes it impossible to perceive what is seen exclusively through the stimulation of the senses. Due to the reverse sequence, we also have to constantly evaluate the images and sounds and actively think about them. Similarly, the film is not satisfied with having only a superficial comedic effect. The image and the diegetic sound force us to think in reverse; conversely, Bedřich’s monologue corresponds to the chronological understanding of things. The constant switching between these two modes of reception and the backwards assigning of points to what was said previously place relatively strong demands on the viewer’s attention. At the same time, however, the ceaseless returning to the actions performed by the actors and the words that they have spoken does not make it impossible to watch the film as a comedy whose humour is immediately comprehensible. In a certain sense, Happy End works both ways. It is a unique work not only in the context of Czechoslovak cinema. By establishing its own rules and concurrently refusing to follow any rules, Happy End is a unique transference of Dadaist poetics to film. 85% (05/05/2015) (menos) (mais)