Allowing yourself to be happy I confess that the title of this film, containing the word “happy”, that is, happy, seemed to me somewhat strange and even cynical, because such an abundance of unhappy people per square meter of film is not found in every drama. At the same time, each of them, just like Leo Tolstoy, is unhappy in their own way.
But director Björn Runge did not want to be cynical. Taking as a headline a typical Hollywood concept and shooting a very leisurely European movie, he showed by the example of his characters that if you bring together a few unhappy people, they can help each other become happier.
Here are five main characters:
Peter is an artist who is unhappy for some unnamed reason and has recently gone through a crisis trying to take his own life.
Jonna is Peter’s mother, who works as a driving instructor, and is unhappy because her son is unhappy.
Martin is a student of Jonna, unhappy because his wife died of cancer a year ago, and he was deprived of his license because of drunk driving.
Katrina is a cleaner at Jonna’s house who is unhappy that she has to clean someone else’s houses because her friend Asger has gone bankrupt and is now hiding from creditors, and to raise self-esteem beats her.
Asger is a friend of Katrina, unhappy because his dream of his own cafe collapsed, there is no money, I do not want to work, and debt collectors are on their heels, threatening to cut off their fingers.
As a result, Runge got a kind of society of alcoholics anonymous, only instead of alcoholics here unhappy people who turned their state of mind into a kind of bad habit. Like ponies, they each walk in their own circle with blinders in their eyes, afraid to break the bonds that bind them until, one day, their fates cross. And then a miracle happens, imperceptible at once, but rooting happiness in the soul of most of them. This feeling slowly grows and grows somewhere deep, and only a strong blow can cut through the crust covering their wounded souls and release it out. Moreover, the blow in this case is not always a figurative concept: one of the heroes will be brutally beaten, someone will recoup on the furniture that turned up under the arm, and someone will be struck by the truth that has been revealed.
This film is the final in the so-called "liberation trilogy". Bjorn Ruge, before that there were “If I Look Back” (2003) and “Mouth in the Mouth” (2005), and in each of the films the characters were given the opportunity to break the artificially erected walls around them and free themselves to feel the taste for life again. Obviously, the title of the movie "Happy End" suggests that only now they have learned it.
8 out of 10