RILEY Happy Sad Man

Page 1

DOCUMENTARY

All Talked Out

Mental Health and Masculinity in Genevieve Bailey’s Happy Sad Man A sensitive, scintillating portrait of five Australian men’s experiences of psychological struggle, Happy Sad Man sets out to contribute to the discourse surrounding mental health, infrastructural and familial support, and gender. Yet, by placing its emphasis on confessional self-reflection and the ways in which individual testimonies line up with already-accepted narratives, the film falls short of adding dimensions to this vital ­conversation, writes Benjamin Riley.

THIS SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: GRANT; JAKE; IVAN (LEFT) AND HIS SON MAX ON THEIR FAMILY’S FARM

44 • Metro Magazine 204 | © ATOM

‘If you were to say that you could reduce the amount of people suffering from cancer by just talking about it, what do you think would happen? Everyone would be talking about it, like, no matter what,’ says Grant, a Sydney-based surfer and mental-health advocate living with bipolar disorder. ‘But, for some reason, mental health – even though you could reduce the suicide rate by starting conversations – still, there’s hardly any people talking about it.’ Grant is one of the five men whose stories filmmaker Genevieve Bailey focuses on in her documentary Happy Sad Man (2018), the ­follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut I Am Eleven (2011). Like Grant, each of the other four men has had profound experiences with mental illness, and each has had to do so within the framework of a masculinity that seemingly doesn’t allow men to be mentally ill. Bailey gently prompts her subjects to reflect on their experiences, noting in voiceover (a device used sparingly throughout the film), ‘There’s this notion that men don’t want to talk about their feelings […] but, in my experience, recently, I’ve found the opposite to be true.’ Along with Grant, the film follows Jake, a war photographer who has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); Ivan, an outreach worker for mental health working in farming communities; David, a performance artist living with anxiety; and John, a close friend of Bailey’s, who is around seventy years old and also has bipolar. It is John’s story that bookends the film, and it’s he who was, Bailey states, the inspiration for making the film in the first place. In voiceover at Happy Sad Man’s beginning, she says she had wanted to understand how the men in her life, like John, navigated intense experiences of both happiness and sadness. Happy Sad Man is deeply intimate – Bailey is allowed into her subjects’ lives at moments of sometimes significant distress – and beautifully shot, often in extreme close-up. The faces of the five men are examined in the same manner that Bailey’s camera probes the mundane detail of their environments, revealing their vulnerability in ways that feel warm and kind rather than exposing. She clearly has a great deal of affection for her subjects, whom she filmed periodically over the course of several years. On one level, Happy Sad Man is a gentle, low-key film about five very different men, in very different circumstances, grappling with mental illness and masculinity. However, beyond the general thesis statement that men need to be allowed to experience vulnerability, to be


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.