Michael Haneke's HAPPY END is just what you expect -- and every bit as much dark fun, too

Dissecting (and eviscerating) Europe's haute bourgeoisie, as ever, German filmmaker Michael Haneke is at it once again. In HAPPY END he's working with those splendid actors he also used in his Oscar-winning (but not really very good) Amour --Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant -- and he's added a number of other, lesser-known (except for Mathieu Kassovitz) performers, each of whom does a terrific job. Especially fine is the young actress Fantine Harduin (shown two photos below and already seen in both the Spiral TV series and in Fanny's Journey), here playing the family's subversive and highly problematic grandchild. The spot-on scene between her and Trintignant toward the film's conclusion is a keeper that also deftly manages to bring all of the movie's concerns to the fore.

Herr Haneke, shown at left, is doing pretty much what he always does, and, as usual, he does it so well -- quietly, subtly, often indirectly -- that intelligent audience are likely to follow along, enrapt as ever.

The very upper-middle class family this time around owns what appears to be a construction firm that may be having some economic difficulties, soon to be made even more difficult by an event -- shown by Haneke ever so quietly, suddenly and at the perfect distance so that it becomes what TrustMovies would call one of the year's best "special effects" -- that helps set things on their ever-spiraling and downward course.

If that very pretty granddaughter, above, has her difficulties, so, too, does Trintignant's other grandchild, played by an actor new to me but very worth seeing, Franz Rogowski (below).

These two young people have problems that are quite obvious. Less so are those of the family matriarch, Trintignant's daughter (played by Huppert, below, commanding and cold, as she so often is) and her sleazy, superficial younger brother (played by Kassovitz, two photos down).

Britisher Toby Jones (shown second from right in the photo at bottom) joins the group as Huppert's fiance, a moneyed fellow who just might pull the ailing company out of its doldrums. The family is cared for and waited upon by a group of French-via-Algeria-looking servants, who are treated not quite badly (but not quite well, either).

All this comes to a delightfully dark head at the engagement party for Huppert and Jones. From the film's beginning right through to its finale, Haneke sees to it that our modern technology plays a major part. How he does this is both clever and unsettling -- which is, one way or another, ultimately the case with all of his films.

From Sony Pictures Classics, Happy End (ah, the irony!) has already played a number of cities throughout the country during its large though limited theatrical run. Click here to see all current and upcoming playdates, cities and theaters.

A contrarian view of AMOUR -- the Michael Haneke version, rather than the real thing

TrustMovies is flummoxed by the supreme praise being given to a relatively tiresome movie like AMOUR, which appears to me to be Michael Haneke's bid to be "liked" and "acces-sible," after offering us a raft of difficult movies that chal-lenge and sometimes infuriate but rarely bore -- which is exactly what this one does. I admit that I may come to the film with perhaps a bit more first-hand knowledge than do most of us regarding up-close-and-personal contact with heavy-duty aging and deterior-ation -- which is both the theme of and the sad situation in this film.

Over a decade ago my companion and I took into our home his ill and not caring-for-herself-at-all-well mother, who has now lived with us for nearly a dozen years. She moved in at age 87 and is approaching 99. So we know something of the care and feeding -- not to mention diaper changing and the sometimes near-constant asking about what hour or day it is, or the default question whenever I appear on the scene, "How are the children?" (She's referring to my grandkids.) But we're lucky because, despite the age and loss of memory (and sometime mind in general), she still has a sense of humor, a good appetite and disposition, and the ability to -- slowly, haltingly, and with help -- move around.

So I was expecting from this film, the opportunity to see the elderly and how they cope (or don't) from a close-up view and angle which, despite my being in the midst of this at home, I usually don't take the time to fully observe. Instead I got a couple of characters whom we learn damn little about: They're musicians and teachers and evidently pretty good ones. They have a daughter and they (she, at least) have coached a prominent and well-received pianist (they attend one of his concerts toward the beginning of the film).

But of their relationship and their "togetherness" -- which occurs only up front, as a stroke soon renders the wife well on her way to vegetable -- we see and learn next to nothing. "You're a monster" the woman tells her husband, Georges, early on, and from the hold-it-all-in performance of Jean-Louis Trintignant (above) this seems quite believable. For her part, Emmanuelle Riva (below), as Anne, soon stroke- and bed-bound, gets even less to do and say.

Now, you may insist that these are simply very subtle and reticent performances. Well, duh, what else could they be, since Haneke has given his pair a screenplay with so little in it to provide character or event or anything else. Watching these two actors at work here slowly became one of the most tiring efforts of my movie-going year, and I had to pinch myself repeatedly and twice smack my own face to stay awake.

The movie comes to life a bit when that pianist (Alexandre Tharaud) comes to call, and even more so when the couple's daughter, played by the great Isabelle Huppert (above and below, with Trintignant) visits. Even then, the screenplay/dialog is godawful -- dull and tiresome and barely believable. It's as though Haneke decided that this "special" situation was ample, so little else needed to be done.

And then, to top it all off, there's that ridiculous pigeon that is brought into the film -- not once but twice -- and proves perhaps the deal-breaker of the century. This fucking bird, well-trained as it clearly is and perhaps meant to signify... something -- flight, free-dom, the soul, a Chinese delicacy? -- is such a foolish notion and so poorly filmed that it should soon cause your jaw to drop. The pige-on appears to be only interested in the apartment floor, with its beak ever down there scouting and pecking, and so it seems clear that some bread or birdseed must have been scattered to keep it involved -- and then taken away via digital effect so we won't notice. The bird just stays and stays and way outstays its welcome, as we continue to wonder why it keeps pecking that floor. Ah, well -- the old movie-making rule: Stay away from children and wildlife.

That all-purpose title word "love" is a cheat, too, as this movie doesn't come close to giving us the real thing. Rather, the filmmaker, shown at left, offers us sentimentality disguised as a dark and necessary undertaking. Bullshit. Numerous alternatives are available to our Georges, but he's having none of them. He is such a "nothing" character, so withholding, tiresome and constipated that he virtually closes the film down early on. Nonetheless, the movie, its actors and writer/director have already picked up a bevy of awards, and I suspect more may come at "Oscar" time. But I hope not. The senior contingent deserves something better -- to view and to represent it -- than this faux-profound bore-fest. (My god -- I sound like Kyle Smith -- but without the hack politics. Well, chalk it up to my great disappointment in this film. Expectations can be dangerous.)

Amour, from Sony Pictures Classics and running an ungodly 127 minutes, arrives this Wednesday, December 19 in New York (at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Film Forum) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's newly refurbished Royal Theatre in West L.A.) -- with openings in cities across the country to follow soon.

Haneke's THE WHITE RIBBON: Something new & less puzzling from the Caché-maker

At the beginning of Michael Haneke's new film THE WHITE RIBBON, the narrator, who sounds quite the ancient fellow, tells us that his story about what hap-
pened in this little German town de-
cades ago could perhaps clarify cer-
tain events that oc-
curred later. What? Herr Haneke (Code Unknown, Caché) is finally making things clear? Well, yes and no.
The White Ribbon is certainly among the most seemingly straight-for-
ward narratives that this German writer/director (shown at left) has given us. In a movie-making class by himself, Haneke is an expert craftsman whose work sometime approaches art. It's a sad, often despairing art, but unless you are one of those who must look at the world through the rose-colored (and too often hypocritical) glasses of religion, or one who wants his movies mainstream -- and happy, goddamnit! -- this is art that reflects all too well the state of humanity.

From those first quiet words of the narrator, we move quickly to a small German town in which a couple of troubling events have just happened. We see them only cursorily, but their aftermath (and the aftermath of that aftermath) we -- and everyone in town -- become obsessed with and stricken by. Terrible things continue to happen, which we see in glimpses and/or from a precise distance. But the things themselves, with one slightly shocking exception that takes place by a body of water, we do not see firsthand. Nor do we learn exactly why they happened or specifically by whom. Enough hints are dropped along the way, however, that by the (again, quiet) conclusion that takes place in -- how sweet and appropriate -- church, I did not need to know anything more. Nor did I suspect, as I have in other Haneke's films -- Caché, for example -- that things were being deliberately withheld and that games were being played with the viewer.

Nor did I feel, as has been often stated about this writer/director, that the man is misanthropic. If you possess any kind of reasonably clear view of our world and its history, you would hardly confuse reality with misanthropy. In any event, a filmmaker who can give us two characters as genuinely kind and hopeful as are the young school-teacher (above, left) and his even younger love, the Baroness' nanny (above, right), then show us their courtship in such a forthright, deeply-felt manner, is hardly a misanthrope.

The scene between that teacher and his prospective father-in-law (above) is terrific: another good example, were one needed, of Haneke's non-misanthropy, as is a splendid little scene between older sister (below, right) and younger brother (below, left) regarding truth and death. While you may counter my non-misogynist "take," with the fact that all these characters -- indeed everyone in the film with whom we spend enough time to know who they are -- eventually caves in to power, tradition, religion and the herd instinct, does not this response tend to be history's rule rather than its exception? How would any of us have acted, had we come of age in Nazi-controlled Germany? The movie implicitly asks this question, among many others.

Along the way, Haneke offers us examples of the misuse of discipline and its result; a lecture about masturbation from father to son (compare this sad, closed speech with the amazing, freeing letter on the same subject from Dalton Trumbo to his son in the film Trumbo); the end of a "love affair" that is certainly among the nastier and more hurtful ways to say goodbye that the screen has given us. The movie is shot in black-and-white (by Christian Berger) and the performances are all of a piece: slightly stiff yet very real, taking us back to a time when formality, even among the lower classes, was given its due.

Those lower classes, by the way, get their due, too, from Haneke -- as does royalty (the Baron is played by the wonderful German actor Ulrich Tukur), clergy, peasants and everyone in between. The Palme d'Or winner at the most recent Festival de Cannes, The White Ribbon take a hard look at the kind of cast-in-stone philosophy and hypocritical behavior that foment major trouble down the road. Though the movie views the road behind us, what it has to say will be no less true for the road ahead.

The White Ribbon is so very well made on every level that I cannot help but recommend it. My only quibble might be that what Haneke is telling us is nothing we have not already heard. Still, it's a message that bears repeating, since we clearly seem unable to either digest it or act on it. The film opens this Wednesday in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and Film Forum, with a national rollout to follow beginning in January. You can check all scheduled release dates, cities and theaters here.