"Happiness" by Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda's "happiness" is a simple and happy feeling that modern people talk about, and this feeling can be calculated mathematically. For example, the happiness created by two joys is always greater than that of one joy. By analogy, the happiness brought by two loves is definitely greater than that of one love, and the happiness brought by two women to a man is always greater than that of one woman. So, when Francois, who had a happy family, met the beautiful Emily at the post office, he accepted the extra "happiness" without the slightest hesitation. Lying beside Emily's beautiful body, he said with satisfaction, "She (his wife) brought me so much joy, and now that I meet you again, you satisfy me, and I love you. You both make me happy. Enjoy enough happiness, and happiness follows." Emily's happiness was similar, when asked Francois, "Have you ever been happy with other men," she replied, " Yes, once. It lasted for three months, and then he left me, and I continued to wait for the next happiness..." Later, François's wife committed suicide after learning that her husband was in love with another woman, so Emily "Happy and unhappy" replaced her, Francois's happiness index decreased a lot, but at least the happiness remained.
Fassbender said of Varda's "Happiness," "There is a group of people in this film who say they are happy but have to repeat everything, and it is incredible that for them happiness is replaceable. "What Fassbender did not expect is that, above all, the contemporary qualities of pleasure and happiness are their computability and substitutability, and this is exemplified in the art of cinema. For example, in Antonioni's "Adventures", love breaks away from any institutional and traditional existence structure, and becomes a life "adventure" that takes place on an unnamed desert island. Similarly, this adventure-like love is constantly mutating and being replaced. Sandro seems to "naturally" fall in love with Claudia during his search for his missing girlfriend Anna on the island, and as he basks in the sweetness of love with Claudia, he is quickly sensitized by a prostitute again body attracted. For Sandro and François in this film, the occurrence, transfer, and replacement of love is just a natural emotional process, following the law of desire of life itself, with natural legitimacy, so it does not lead to a certain kind of "sin".
The liberation of human's natural emotions based on physical desires is a part of modernity. This liberation enables human emotions to escape from the constraints of traditional religious-patriarchal ethics and achieves a sense of "lightness". The so-called natural emotion refers, of course, to the emotion of human beings in a natural state. Whether it is a Rousseau-style "noble savage" or a Hobbes-style "all man against all man's war", natural man is affected by sexuality. Domination by the Law of Desire: Sexual desire only requires constant satisfaction, and never limits the object of satisfaction. Of course, love is not equal to pure sexual desire, but the object of love based on human natural emotions is not unique like sexual desire, just like what modern people often experience in movies and life. Paradoxically, since civilization is more or less the result of some kind of repression, it is doubtful to what extent the natural feelings of man as observed in modern bourgeois society are still "natural", and conversely, natural feelings. The legitimacy does not require argumentation. It is quite possible that a conception of love based on natural affections, like a democracy based on natural rights, is a peculiar product of modern bourgeois society. As a historical comparison, the myth of Aristophanes in the Symposium about the complete human being united through erotic desire, and the traditional Catholic doctrine that "the covenant of marriage is created by the Creator" are both. The object of love is believed to be unique. This "prehistoric" view of love is still maintained by a small number of nostalgic and romantic people. They believe that although a person may have feelings for many people, and even fall in love several times, there is only one real love. Love can only be one person.
Compensating for the loss of the quality of love through the number of times of falling in love, and decomposing happiness into individual happiness that can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided, all these are in line with the utilitarian school that laid the philosophical foundation for modern capitalist society. "The greatest happiness of the greatest number" 's teachings. Since it is determined that the chance of encountering the real "other half" in the vast crowd is almost zero, modern people turn to pursue the second-best substitute, so the value of emotion is greatly depreciated. This is a piece of "Happiness" The starting point of ethics, and the spearhead of its criticism ultimately points to the middle-class society.
"Happiness" was filmed in 1965. Three years ago, American writer Richard Yates published "Revolutionary Road". This well-known novel in the United States describes the American middle-class life represented by the monotonous, peaceful and boring suburbs, and achieves the purpose of criticism through the resistance of a middle-class couple and the tragedy caused by the resistance. The revolt is quintessentially American: intuitive, impulsive, eager, violent. Agnès Varda's resistance, inspired by the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s and the New Wave, was much more subtle, and her criticism was invisible. Although the real tragedy is just around the corner, a woman commits suicide because of her husband's transference, but no one in the film is disturbed by it. Still a happy family.
Agnès Varda gave the film the cheerful rhythm and warm imagery worthy of the title "Happiness", but behind it was a naked cold, just like Alain Resnais' "Night and Fog", the image And the narrative is tender to cruel. The common French's love for country life revealed in the opening scene of a country picnic clearly echoes Renoir's "A Day in the Countryside", but just like the latter, danger and cruelty are hidden behind the surface poetry. Mozart's music runs through almost the entire film. Together with the free jump cuts and the rich color sense in the picture, they establish the cheerful rhythm of the film. This rhythm is maintained throughout the film. Francois's wife commits suicide. Previously, the audience could not see any hints and metaphors of tragedy in the film. When tragedy strikes, this upbeat rhythm is interrupted for only a brief moment and then resumed quickly. This bourgeois "joy" will eventually smooth out and forget all pain, as it keeps looking for alternatives for self-sustainability.
Telling a true tragedy in a light-hearted style is the true source of the ironic power of "Happiness," and the depth of the critique. And the Hollywood film Revolutionary Road, based on Yates' novel, can't even tell a simple story.

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