Michael Haneke on ‘Happy End’
The gap between Amour and Happy End was the longest between any of your films. Was that because Happy End was a long time gestating?
No, it was simply because in the meantime I wrote a different film called Flash Mob, but I couldn’t cast that properly, and that took a very long time. Writing the new script for this also took a fair amount of time.
Although they’re very different films in tone, I was intrigued by Happy End’s continuities with Amour in terms of the same actors – Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert playing father and daughter again – and the same character names. What did you intend by using similar character names, Georges, Eva and Anne?
Simple reason, it’s my lack of imagination. In all my films, the characters have the same names. I came up with those names a long time ago for a television film. After all, they all come from the same head.
Happy End is very much an ensemble drama, with lots of intriguing characters. Which of those was the first one to take shape in your mind?
The story of the girl who poisons her mother was in the previous script, already. So that’s what I took over from that project. I found it in the newspaper, so that’s the starting point.
The actor you found to play her, Fantine Harduin, is really quite extraordinary. What were you looking for when casting that character?
I wanted a 13-year-old girl who you would imagine could poison her mother. I didn’t want some nice or naive young girl. It worked with Fantine because she had something about her face, something unusual, something mysterious, and that was the key thing.
Did it take long to find her?
Yes, it did. We tried 60 or 70 different girls. It always takes a long time. In the case of The White Ribbon, we had to audition 7,000 children for the parts.
You’re thought of as a filmmaker who engages with technology and yet your last couple of films were either set in the past or dealt with very elderly people. Technology has moved on leaps and bounds in that time. Did you specifically want to engage with social media at this point?
Those other two films were an exception in that sense. But if you’re making a film about our society today you can’t avoid social media because it dominates our life. It’s not that I’m particularly fixated on the media or on technology in that way. It’s a social issue.
The film is one of the first I’ve seen that really explores the difference between our public selves and what we get up to privately, digitally, on our computers and our mobile phones. Are you concerned about that split between our online personalities and our outer personalities?
The amazing thing about it is the fact that social media has, to some extent, taken on the role that was previously the role of the church. Previously, if you did something bad in life you would go to the priest and you would confess. Now you go to a forum and you either expect to be forgiven or perhaps you expect to be punished and to be outed for what you’ve done. That was what was so interesting about the story of this little girl – there is a religious aspect
to it.
How important is Calais as the backdrop for the film?
At the time I wrote it, Calais was everywhere in the press. It was a focal point of all the discussions that were going on [about the refugee crisis]. And of course, it lent itself, for that reason, to the film. It was the ideal choice because it’s addressing the question of our ignorance of others. It’s about egocentrism within the family, at the workplace, in the circles in which we move, but also the nation as a whole, the way in which the misery of others is irrelevant to us individually. It’s all about our own little routines in everyday life. I couldn’t have made a film about migrants themselves because I don’t know them.
Yet because the migrants don’t have speaking roles, were you concerned about depersonalising them?
Yes, that’s exactly how they’re seen by us: as an abstract danger, a depersonalised danger. As soon as somebody has a personality you enter into a relationship with them on an emotional level, and then it’s not as easy to dismiss them.
There’s a memorable moment when Pierre, Anne’s wayward son, lets loose with an eccentric karaoke performance of Sia’s ‘Chandelier’. What inspired that?
I originally just wrote in the script, ‘karaoke scene’, but it turned out that the actor couldn’t sing. So we wondered how to use his physicality in the film. Just at that moment, by chance, on the internet I saw this famous video of a girl of about the same age as the girl in the film who dances to that song. And it’s been viewed millions of times and there are parodies of it online, and we decided that we would do that instead. So he tries to parody it and that’s how it starts. It was great fun to do that scene.
Are you concerned that young people who grow up watching screens maybe don’t know where to find the line?
I’m not so sure about that. With the students that I teach and the young people that I meet, I don’t get a sense that they’re victims of the media in that way.
We are all victims of the media, but in another sense. The question is the truthfulness of the information that we get on TV, in the news. We believe that we’re informed about global events, but ultimately, we don’t know anything. We believe it, but we can’t judge the truthfulness of what we hear. We believe that we know something, but that’s where the possibility of manipulation comes in. It opens up the door to manipulation, particularly manipulation of a political kind.
A simple example that I often give is a farmer in a mountain village before television and before the internet. He knew that village, knew the mountains, and then went to and would also know the neighbouring village. Now, that same farmer will have a TV and a computer and believes, at least, that he knows the world, but really, he knows nothing more than he actually knew before because what you need is personal experience to know something. It’s not knowing otherwise, it’s just believing that you know something, and that’s the danger. For example, I only believe that I know something about Afghanistan from the television, but I don’t actually know about it.
How can we guard ourselves against being manipulated by the media?
You can’t really be protected. You have to be sceptical and be attentive and keep on the lookout.
Interview by Sam Wigley, bfi.org.uk, 27 November 2017
Happy End
Director: Michael Haneke
©: Les Films du Losange, X Filme Creative Pool Entertainment GmbH, Wega-Film, Arte France Cinéma, France 3 Cinéma, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, ARTE, ORF
Co-produced by: Arte France Cinéma, France 3 Cinéma, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, ARTE, ARTE France
In co-operation with: France Télévisions, Canal+, Ciné+, ORF Film/Fernseh-Abkommen
With the support of: Cinema Srl, Le Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée, Pictanovo, Région Hauts de France, Filmförderungsanstalt, CNC/FFA Minitraite, Österreichisches Filminstitut, Filmfonds Wien, Eurimages Conseil de l’Europe
Presented by: Les Films du Losange, X Filme Creative Pool, Wega-Film
Executive Producers: Margaret Ménégoz, Uwe Schott, Michael Katz
Supervising Producer: Margaret Ménégoz
Produced by: Margaret Ménégoz, Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka, Michael Katz
Production Managers: Sylvie Barthet, Ulli Neumann, Ulrike Lässer
1st Assistant Director: Alain Olivieri
2nd Assistant Director: Olivier Falkowski
3rd Assistant Director: Aurélien Chevalarias
Script Supervisor: Maggie Perlado
Casting: Kris Portier, Markus Schleinzer, David El Hakim, Colomba Falcucci
Script & Dialogues: Michael Haneke
Directors of Photography: Christian Berger, Martin Gschlacht
Camera Operator: Gerald Helf
Steadicam Operators: Thibault Marsan-Bachere, Benoît Theunissen, Marcus Pohlus, Jörg Widmer
Digital Imaging Technician: Ioan Gavriel
Special Effects: Jean-Baptiste Bonetto, Christian Rivet, Rémi Canaple
Edited by: Monika Willi
Production Designer: Olivier Radot
Costume Designer: Catherine Leterrier
Key Make-up: Thi-Loan N’guyen, Thi-Than-Tu Nguyen
Key Hair Stylist: Frédéric Souquet
Choreography: Jefta Van Dinther
Sound Recordist: Guillaume Sciama
Sound: Guillaume Sciama, Jean-Pierre Laforce, Denise Gerrard
Re-recording Mixer: Jean-Pierre Laforce
Sound Effects: Pascal Chauvin
Stunt Co-ordinator: Philippe Guégan
Cast
Isabelle Huppert (Anne Laurent)
Jean-Louis Trintignant (Georges Laurent)
Mathieu Kassovitz (Thomas Laurent)
Fantine Harduin (Ève Laurent)
Franz Rogowski (Pierre Laurent)
Laura Verlinden (Anaïs Laurent)
Toby Jones (Lawrence Bradshaw)
Hassam Ghancy (Rachid, caretaker)
Nabiha Akkari (Jamila, caretaker’s wife and cook)
Dominique Besnehard (Marcel, hairdresser)
Aurélia Petit (Nathalie)
Hille Perl (viola da gamba player)
Joud Geistlich (Selin)
Philippe de Janerand (Maître Barin)
Bruno Tuchszer, Alexandre Carrière (inspectors)
Nathalie Richard (estate agent)
David Yelland (bank manager)
France-Germany-Austria 2017©
108 mins
Digital 4K
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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