Hyde Park Pick: Happyend

Happyend is totally absorbing, wonderfully mysterious and brilliantly singular.

The near-future dystopian world of Happyend isn’t painstakingly explained. We don’t need all the context of the regular earthquake alerts and unsettling surveillance. The mystery and search for clues is part of what kept me so intrigued throughout the film. And the stylish nocturnal cinematography and understated emotions were so well-crafted that it felt very believable. In fact, whilst Happyend can be described as a dystopian, unfortunately, the creeping rise and normalisation of anti-immigrant sentiments alongside tendencies towards mass monitoring make the film feel not at all far-fetched.

Seeing advanced surveillance technology in a school doesn’t feel too far from reality as educational institutions can be very authoritarian environments where even what you wear feels overly policed in a way that wouldn’t feel appropriate in any other part of society, for now anyway.

The score had an especially huge impact on the mood of the film and is by Lia Ouyang Rusli, the same composer who worked on Sorry, Baby, another of my favourite films of the year. It’s ominous, futuristic and very cool.

The power of friendship and music are central to Happyend – their presence is felt with even greater weight than a looming earthquake. Music fans are especially likely to love the film and it all added up for me when I read about the director, Neo Sora. He’s the son of the famous composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and directed Sakamoto’s final film, the wonderful Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus as well as being known for making music videos.

Coming-of-age films with central teenage characters can be so hard to pull off because being a teenager is a distant memory for most directors. But Neo Sora perfectly captures the realistic friendship group of these Tokyo teenagers. Something that struck me is how the everyday nuances of relationships is often the most important thing to us. Even when much bigger world events are happening around us. Shamefully, I felt like I could relate to Yuta’s preoccupation with his friendships and how their potential dissipation after graduation felt like a bigger natural disaster than the massive earthquakes the government were constantly warning them about. As much as this frustrated his best friend Kou, who thought Yuta was being too frivolous and needed to take politics and protest more seriously, this feels very fitting in a world where atrocities as big as the genocide in Gaza are taking place, but people can’t help but be blinded and more interested in their personal everyday concerns. I think we can feel a lot of empathy for both of these central friends: Yuta who feels the need to escape in music and friendships from a reality that’s too much to contend with, and Kou who is frustrated that his friend won’t fight for a fairer society, perhaps partly because it doesn’t affect him as directly.

My words can hardly do this gem of a film justice but hopefully they’ve given you a sense of how much the film meant to me, particularly thanks to its presentation of the importance, yet complexities of friendships as you age and values diverge. Also, the value of art, specifically music, as an escape. And then the tension that comes with this desire for escapism and the need to be alert and responsive to political injustices. In Happyend’s case, it does both: it’s a thoroughly transportive piece of art, but also thought-provoking and its parallels to our reality will keep you thinking long after watching.

Happyend is showing at HPPH from Fri 03 Oct. You can book tickets here.