The early days of the internet and Y2K panic are far enough in the rearview mirror that the techno(phobic) thrillers of those times have morphed into relics of a bygone era. For older viewers, there remains something charmingly nostalgic and naive about many of these films, while younger viewers can gain new insights into the paranoia and anxieties (some baseless, many not) that plagued Gen X-ers as humanity was on the precipice of a new chapter. As the Criterion Channel’s recent collection of “Technothrillers” attests, these films run the gamut from the broadest of mainstream fare (Sneakers, The Net) to the stranger, more experimental end of the spectrum (eXistenZ, Demonlover). Yet, while these aforementioned films frequently pop up as examples of 90s/early-aughts examinations of the sea change brought on by the internet, Michael Almereyda’s singular and deeply strange Happy Here and Now continues, sadly, to lurk in obscurity.
It’s perhaps fitting that Almereyda’s beguiling curio remains available only in SD—either on a long-out-of-print DVD or the equally murky print currently available to rent on Amazon—as the director has never been one to shoot for precise visual or narrative clarity. His oeuvre is peppered with film’s explicitly experimenting with form, beginning with his first three features, all of which were shot on Pixelvision using the arcane PXL-2000 camera designed for children. His inquisitiveness about the nature of digital video extends into his 2000 modernization of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which several of the Bard’s monologues play out as digitally recorded video playing on screens within the film.
Indeed, the medium is very much the message with Almereyda. And with Happy Here and Now the shiny new toy that was a widely accessible cyberspace was as enticing and thrilling as it is dangerous. Eddie (David Arquette), an exterminator and wannabe indie director obsessed with making a film about Nikola Tesla (a task Almereyda himself finally completed nearly two decades later), tells his actors that “The internet is the new hub of the wheel.” He goes on to say he’ll meet his wife on the internet and suggests that everything important in the future will come into being there, including his supposed magnum opus.
Eddie goes on to ask his two actors “You think video’s cheap and insubstantial, don’t you?” It’s clear by this point, midway through the film, that Arquette’s character is frequently voicing Almereyda’s own thoughts, concerns, and interests, although the director is self-effacing enough to show the over-confident faux-teur to be all too full of himself, especially in a hilarious sequence involving a Tesla coil and a sex scene gone awry.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Although Eddie eventually emerges as the film’s central character, Happy Here and Now begins with a young woman, Amelia (Liane Balaban), on the hunt for her younger sister, the 16-year old Muriel (Shalom Harlow), who has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. In Amelia’s mind, and her mother’s (Ally Sheedy), this is not like Muriel. Of course, when they discover her computer hard drive was wiped and can only retrieve a series of unusual video chats between Muriel and the deeply reflective yet peculiar Eddie Mars (Karl Geary), who pontificates like Matthew McConaughey doing a Bob Dylan impersonation, there’s clearly more going on beneath the surface.
Amelia’s investigation brings us into the orbit of a private investigator (Clarence Williams III), a famous R&B singer (Ernie K-Doe playing himself just months before his death), and a fireman, Tom (also Geary), who may be the Eddie in those videos or unknowingly just another man’s visual avatar. In one of many prophetic moments in the film, we learn that deep fakes are already a thing in this early-aughts universe—an application that further muddies everyone’s idea of where Muriel went and who exactly may be involved in her disappearance.
That this entire mystery plays out in the wonderfully offbeat city of pre-Katrina New Orleans adds a further sense of vibrancy and playfulness to the film. While, as Arquette’s Eddie says,
“People are channeling themselves through machines,” the “real world” in which all this plays out is just as alluring as the online realm is to both Muriel and Eddie. But Almereyda doesn’t present these as simplistic binaries (a la online bad/real world good), instead teasing out the yin and yang that co-mingles within both of them. It’s clear from her conversations with Eddie Mars that Muriel is enticed by the ideas he’s discussing, and Almereyda infers that virtual connection can be just as strong, meaningful, and, yes, real, as IRL meetings are precisely because of this sort of unfiltered intellectual exchange. Sure, the suave Mars is an avatar for someone more insecure, but Almereyda leaves more than enough room for the viewer to decide which version of that person is the more genuine representation of their true self.
If Almereyda wraps up all his dense philosophical queries and dilemmas in a circuitous narrative that’s at times a bit too loose and flabby—a subplot involving Gloria Reuben feels almost completely superfluous—it’s idiosyncratic manner of delivery keeps it thought-provoking and entertaining in equal measure. Digressions abound, certainly, but when they involve a hilariously cringe-worthy EDM performance, characters cruising around the scuzzier sides of New Orleans listening to Fela Kuti, and an intimate Ernie K-doe performance, it’s easy to forgive. The future may not have played out exactly as Almereyda as imagined, but his early notion of the internet, and perhaps the world at large, as both a beautiful and terrifying space still rings true today, and his film remains a spry and knotty piece of speculative fiction.
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