As December draws to its tinselly close, few are looking back fondly at 2016, a year that saw the British and American public perform acts of severe political self-harm, that brought a violent resurgence of fascism to the mainstream, that was blighted by a number of horrifying terrorist attacks across the globe, and bade farewell to any number of beloved artists and celebrities. Blindly we await 2016’s end in the vague hope that 2017 can’t possibly be worse, but comfort has been hard to come by.
Oddly, the movies haven’t really been holding up their end of the bargain. Traditionally, in times of national strife, Hollywood has provided a steady supply of cheery escapism: take the all-star musical revues they made repeatedly during the second world war, or the breezy screwball comedies that saw America through the Great Depression. This year, however, a number of the year’s biggest blockbusters have reflected the pessimism of the age: superhero stories may be broadly escapist, but it was hard to feel particularly uplifted by the brutal nihilism of Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, nor the stern political allegories of Captain America: Civil War or Rogue One.
Over in the arthouses, meanwhile, filmmakers have engaged more literally with the pressing social and political issues of the day: Ken Loach landed a Palme d’Or and unexpectedly strong UK box office for decrying the injustices of the welfare state in I, Daniel Blake, while Gianfranco Rosi took top honours at Berlin for Fire at Sea, his sobering documentary study of the European refugee crisis. Today’s moviegoers are as likely to see their world – however distorted – reflected back at them as they are to be entertained.
Where is the happiness on screen, then? Has pessimism colonised the multiplex? Thankfully not, as a number of titles have balanced a social conscience with a generally upbeat outlook. Few films this year were as effervescently joyous as Disney’s creature feature Zootropolis, a freewheeling, colour-saturated riot of zippy multi-genre plotting and lightning humour that nonetheless worked as a pointed critique of racial segregation and sexism in the workplace. That it ultimately finds a bright solution to such ills is merely part of the Disney brand – though there’s no harm in its message that we could all stand to be a bit nicer to each other.
Meanwhile, Theodore Melfi’s Oscar-buzzed Hidden Figures pulls a similar tonal trick. The little-known true story of three female African American mathematicians enlisted to assist NASA in the heated space race of the 1960s – quietly smashing the institution’s patriarchy and racial segregation in the process – it may revisit a period of great national shame, but is determined to accentuate the positive throughout with breezy banter and a permanently perky score by Pharrell Williams. As America reels from the rise of the alt-right, the film arrives as a hopeful tonic to liberal audiences.
Buoyant optimism is also the order of the day in another Disney title, Queen of Katwe, also a fact-based tale of a woman of colour succeeding against the odds. Telling the story of prodigious Ugandan chess champion Phiona Mutesi, director Mira Nair puts a progressive feminist spin on a traditionally rousing sports-movie formula; the film positively beams with hard-won happiness. (Factor in the sunny girl-power romp Moana, and Disney’s on a roll.) Equally plucky in its portrait of a sporting underdog, Dexter Fletcher’s Eddie the Eagle, about determined but fundamentally ungifted British ski jumper Eddie Edwards, finds a lot to cheer about in its protagonist’s defeat; it’s a distinctly uncool celebration of giving life your best shot, and all the more endearing for that.
Message movies are all well and good, but some less virtuous cheerfulness is also in order – and no 2016 film filled that gap more pleasurably than Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie. A sitcom spinoff low on cinematic merit but high on breathless, absurd farce, this gaudy outing for Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley’s inseparable fashion victims plays as a paean to unapologetic hedonism, but also as a more sincere hurrah for loyal friendship. “It’s bloody good fun,” Saunders’ Edina offers as a catch-all explanation for her misbehaviour; British audiences, in need of a lift this summer after the sour fallout of the Brexit referendum, agreed.
The multiplex had other happy hours to offer this year – from the heart-soaring surprise of David Lowery’s Pete’s Dragon remake to the candyfloss-brained animated karaokefests Trolls and Sing – yet the independent sphere had its share of quietly spirit-lifting fare too. I refer not to the bait-and-switch of Damien Chazelle’s gorgeous Oscar frontrunner La La Land, even if its publicity presents it as pure sunny delight: Get past those first two ebullient musical numbers, and it’s an increasingly melancholic story of romantic regret and mistiming. Instead, it’s John Carney’s youthful Irish let’s-start-a-band story Sing Street that stands as the year’s most unabashedly joyous musical, down to its beautifully ludicrous, swelling, reality-fleeing finale.
Audience mileage varied on Everybody Wants Some!!, Richard Linklater’s loose-limbed, sun-baked reflection on Texan fraternity hijinks in the 1980s. Some accused Linklater of being nostalgically complicit in his characters’ jockish sexism; others accepted a degree of critical distance. For me, it was one of the year’s happiest rambles, an ode to youthful, irresponsible, sometimes misguided pleasure.
Linklater’s film couldn’t be more different in tone from the reserved humanism of Mike Mills’ autobiographical 20th Century Women, a wise, tender story of a single mother gradually accepting her teenage son’s independence, or Paterson, Jim Jarmusch’s typically deadpan, atypically elemental study of several days in the life of a taciturn bus driver-cum-poet and his devoted, eccentric wife. Outwardly, these bittersweet character studies don’t seem overtly, jubilantly happy. Yet in their mutual, sincere examination of the challenges and rewards of finding and maintaining contentment, they strike me as two of the year’s most joyous films. We could use more of them in 2017.
