Happy End is a thematically simple yet extremely complex and well-orchestrated experimental black comic oddity where time runs in reverse. We begin with the inverse of an execution, a dismembered head flying back to the corpse of our protagonist Bedrich — signified by his narration as his birth and to be interpreted as akin to the cutting of the umbilical cord — and we track what lead to his demise, all the way to the very technical beginning of his life where he's a child in a crib — seen as his last moments on this Earth, death. This whole operation is a temporal pincer.
If this played out in regular motion, it'd be a crime thriller about a guy falling in love, slowly fucking up his marriage, catching his wife in an affair, killing the guy she's cheating with, and being sentenced to death. But in reverse, it might just be one of the funniest films ever? Tragedy becomes comedy as punch-lines and set-ups swap places and action set-pieces become surrealist slapstick where people eat, run, jump, and fight along the mobius strip. Mordantly gleeful absurdism that goes to show just how far fucking around with camera techniques can get you.
Happy End is a thematically simple yet extremely complex and well-orchestrated experimental black comic oddity where time runs in reverse. We begin with the inverse of an execution, a dismembered head flying back to the corpse of our protagonist Bedrich — signified by his narration as his birth and to be interpreted as akin to the cutting of the umbilical cord — and we track what lead to his demise, all the way to the very technical beginning of his life where he's a child in a crib — seen as his last moments on this Earth, death. This whole operation is a temporal pincer.
If this played out in regular motion, it'd be a crime thriller about a guy falling in love, slowly fucking up his marriage, catching his wife in an affair, killing the guy she's cheating with, and being sentenced to death. But in reverse, it might just be one of the funniest films ever? Tragedy becomes comedy as punch-lines and set-ups swap places and action set-pieces become surrealist slapstick where people eat, run, jump, and fight along the mobius strip. Mordantly gleeful absurdism that goes to show just how far fucking around with camera techniques can get you.
