FILM REVIEW: The Happy Film by: Jill Hardy
Screened as part of the The Architecture & Design Film Festival held at Circle Cinema in Tulsa, Stefan Sagmeister’s The Happy Film is both a paean to artistic design and an examination of personality, life events, and the meaning and source of happiness. In short...it’s a tall order for a documentary. I work as a copywriter, and therefore have a great deal of appreciation for good design, both as an art lover, and someone whose paycheck depends on the symbiosis between words and images to get a point across. But if I’m being honest...I don’t follow many designers, personally, or even have a working knowledge of names in the field. However I figured it was worth a look when my son--a graphic design major--mentioned this film and seemed a little star struck about its creator, Stefan Sagmeister. I was also intrigued by The Architecture & Design Film Festival, which is (I was surprised to learn) the country’s biggest film festival showcasing architecture and design. If you’re an admirer of architecture, this festival offers multiple films about these facets of visual art, as well as opportunities to interact with filmmakers, and other social events. If you’re not particularly interested in design, and you’re wondering if a documentary created by a designer will hold your attention, don’t worry. The Happy Film is visually compelling, from the opening credits to the last images. The movie only briefly touches on Sagmeister’s reputation and background, and simply shows the audience his work, through vignettes of him and his business partner Jessica Walsh working in their New York studio and in scenes where you witness The Happy Show, the art exhibition connected with the film. This is part of the genius of the film; it shows you Sagmeister’s quest, as much as it talks about it. Shots of him attempting to lift himself into the air, via balloons and failing; or standing on a busy street, handing flowers to pretty women he’d like to talk
to (and getting both refusals and smiles). These are images that drive home the movie’s purpose, and give you a visual representation of what he’s trying to do—get happy.
working in the arts, who gets to take a yearlong break every few years and go to a place that can be a veritable paradise on Earth and try to figure out what would make him happier.
There are three main parts to the film, three pathways that Sagmeister tests in his journey to find out if he can actually orchestrate his own happiness like he can plan out a design project.
Then something happened...during the course of the movie, one of the directors dies.
The first potential solution is meditation. Sagmeister takes a sabbatical every seven years, and when the movie opens, he is on one such yearlong break, in Bali. To be honest, when I saw this, I rolled my eyes. This film caught me at a time in life where I had just spent a year working three jobs (as a single mom) to get myself and three children above the poverty line. I had just come through a situation that had reaffirmed to me--painfully-that there is still much that keeps art and the world it opens from being readily accessible to those who aren’t in a particular financial demographic. So it put me off at first, to see a wealthy man
This unexpected turn stunned me momentarily, then reminded me of a very valuable truth that has helped me in times past, when struggling to reconcile class issues; money isn’t everything. Money cannot buy happiness, and it can’t even really buy the things that you think would produce it. (Read: A meditation retreat in Bali.) I was able to see Sagmeister’s experiment with different eyes after that. His attempts to find bliss through mindfulness, and then therapy, and finally (prescription) drugs aren’t things that everyone can afford, it’s true, but his search is something that resonates. Filling in the spaces between the stages of Sagmeister’s happiness solutions are conversations with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Haidt serves as a barometer of sorts, balancing Sagmeister’s observations and attempts with reminders about the overarching purpose behind what he’s doing. Kind of like Jiminy Cricket with a PhD. I’m going to spoil the ending a bit by revealing that there is no revelation. Sagmeister makes some discoveries, and we get to witness some growth (and some questionable decisions), but in the end there really is no clean discovery of personal nirvana. However this makes for a perfect ending for a film about discovering how to be happier, if you understand that it really is not something that has a specific recipe. Or a design. n Jill Hardy writes and lives in south Oklahoma City. She can be reached at hardyjilld@gmail.com.
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