Young people have always been doomed to carry the burden of the previous generations fears and failures. It’s hard to imagine how the future must look to the next generation who shall the most surveilled in history, and who face bleak ecological and global economic realities. Will they find their voices and fight back or be crushed beneath the weight of this dying world. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus director Neo Sora utilises the familiar coming-of-age drama to explore these urgent concerns.
High school students Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaka) get bored one night and flip their principal’s car on to it’s edge. In response the administration introduces an advanced monitoring system that records, catalogues and judges the students, completely indifferent to the context or motivation of their actions. It’s a chillingly prescient vision of the near future. A youth forced into conformity by algorithms enforcing policy they cannot understand or oppose; held to an unnatural standard of behaviour that erases their individuality. What chance at rebellion is there when disruptive behaviour is captured instantly and offenders quietly removed from the classroom?
Against this backdrop, Yuta and Kou’s friendship, and perhaps budding relationship, feels all the more vital and fragile. Their bond isn’t just about teenage solidarity but about carving out a space for humanity in a mechanised future. This extends to the rest of the class who all come to the decision to fight back against the system and strike for the right to privacy, even at the cost of security.
Yet Happyend resists easy solutions or binary positions. Not all of the students oppose the system, and not every student who dislikes the system is comfortable with risking everything to fight it. Yuta and Kou are torn apart by their differing attitudes, one emboldened to fight back, the other just wanting to have whatever fun is left to be had in this oppressive society. In a divided world, Sora’s film takes an empathetic view of those who do not join the fight, even if ultimately following a traditional journey towards rebellion.
The boys live in a world rocked with earthquakes, which helps the powers-that-be justify the necessity of technology as a warning measure against both natural disaster and the crime that they claim will inevitably follow. Everyone is encouraged to trust the machines, and not their neighbours. Beyond surveillance and rebellion, the film touches upon notions of national identity and xenophobia as the class is often divided along national and cultural lines that cur through the population, severing meaningful personal and political connections.
Happyend is engaging with some challenging material, but it is not joyless. There’s humour to be found in the kafkaesque absurdity of the school’s administration and in the warmth the kids have together. When not engaged in the struggle, they find solace in their music classes and when they too are threatened by the administration, they find new means of bonding and expressing themselves. That is perhaps the optimistic heart of the film. That it is not mankind’s technologies that will redeem or save it, but rather the simple act of connecting with others. Such a simple message of hope, in a cynical world, feels radical.
Four Stars