1967 dark comedy
Rating: 16/20
Plot: A man is born, meets and assembles his wife, and fights for her love as she becomes infatuated with another man. Unless you watch it on rewind. Then it's about something else entirely.
I'm not doing too well with my personal 2018 movie challenge of czeching out every single Czechoslovakian movie. This is only my third, and the year is already half over!
This movie was an absolute delight. There's a gimmick here, the same sort of gimmick you've seen with Memento and Irreversible where it all unfolds backwards. The key difference is that this doesn't just show the scenes in reverse chronological order. No, Happy End shows everything in reverse. So you see people walking backwards, a guillotined head defying gravity and finding its way back onto its body, a flailing man rising from the ground to an upper-story apartment window, and horses and riders reverse-falling. It seems like the sort of gimmick that would get tiresome after a bit, but director Oldrich Lipsky--the guy who did Lemonade Joe, the only other film of his I've seen--keeps finding clever ways to keep the idea fresh. A completely different sort of dramatic irony is utilized here, an odd case where the audience knows something that the character also knows but doesn't quite know it in the right context.
For example, there's the protagonist's court case where we have already heard the verdict of guilty and have seen his head lopped off as punishment for his crimes where we next get to see his attorney reassuring him with a "Don't worry." With Lipsky's backward storytelling, death becomes birth, dismemberment becomes assembly, prison becomes school, and the saving of a life becomes a coldblooded murder that is cheered by onlookers. It's brilliantly funny stuff. Lipsky takes advantage of all sorts of things that just look funny backwards--eating cookies (which transforms people into cookie-generation machines), etc. I'm juvenile enough that I would giggle at people doing things backwards anyway, but this is packed with so many clever moments.
It's not just visually funny. Cleverly written dialogue takes on whole new meanings as lines are flipped around. Forced to read subtitles and still focus on the visuals, there were countless funny bits of dialogue that I know I missed that I wouldn't have missed had this been in English. The main character also narrates his story, adding new meaning to life events like marriage, the death of a loved one, and childbirth.
It's not the least bit profound, but it's one of the most entertaining comedies I've seen in a really long time. I need to see more Oldrich Lipsky soon, and not just because his name is made up of four everyday English words. This guy is great!
Very highly recommended.
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