Secret to happiness a bore
Finding Hygge
(out of 4) Documentary. Directed by Rocky Walls. Starts Friday at Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema. 93 minutes. STC It’s a state of mind — or, often, a social state. “Cosiness” is the closest word we have to it in English, but that’s not quite right, we’re told. Yours might arise when catching up with old friends, or when gardening alone. Finding Hygge explores a trendy Danish idea and finds that it is … nice.
“It’s something we talk about constantly,” says Meik Wiking, one of the documentary’s principal talking heads, when explaining hygge. The Danes have been told repeatedly that they are the world’s happiest people and, on the evidence of this film, by directed by American Rocky Walls, they have decided the self-conscious pursuit of happiness is a national specialty
We spend a lot of time at first with Garrey Dawson, a British expat restaurateur who treasures the work-life balance he has found at a Danish village inn, and it’s through his journey that we come to understand this distinct national notion — not joy, exactly, but a kind of contentment, the sort achieved through low-key social gatherings with family and friends and satisfying personal rituals.
A happy life makes for a dull biography, they say, and so it often is here. Denmark seems full of piercingly-blue-eyed people who have thought a lot about happiness, none of them very combustible; I don’t know the Danish word for “excitement” but hygge, as described, seems to be its opposite. (I wish I could tell you that Finding Hygge’s side trip to exotic Manitoba solves the problem.)
None of that detracts from the esthetic appeal of the life vision set out here. A hygge-filled life in Denmark comes off as a fine aspiration, thanks to the appealing cinematography by Joe Frank — tasteful, minimally decorated interiors suggesting the most welcoming of uppermiddle-class retailers; artfully composed establishing shots full of sturdy wooden arches and colourful flowers; and long aerial shots of verdant nature or laughing beachgoers dashing into the sea.
It does look easy for them. Life’s struggles seem to have hit the cutting-room floor. No one in the film is unsuccessful (or ugly) or has a genuine problem that might keep them from hygge; the line between satisfaction and complacency seems to disappear. The young Manitoban’s mother urges her to decompress after “her stressful day” — but what does she do for a living? We never see anyone work, except making nice meals in tidy kitchens. Does anyone ever argue at hygge gatherings? We see people talking amiably in groups but never hear what is actually talked about.
The movie — returning to the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema after two screenings in January — isn’t interested in elaborating on what in life hygge as a value is meant to push against, outside of working too hard, U.K./ U.S.-style. We meet a journalist who used to crusade for justice and sustainability and get into arguments online but then something snapped and now she just wants to garden with her dog and write “joyful nice pieces working with nice people.” The world outside might still be getting worse, but hers has gotten better.
The film does, to its credit, present people who argue that hygge has a dark side — its cosiness that makes it hard for new arrivals to penetrate old social circles — and, after Wiking argues that you don’t need particular accessories to achieve hygge, we meet a half-Danish couple in Colorado whose store is devoted to selling you them.
Find the quiet things, gatherings and places that make you happy and carve out more time for them, Finding Hygge argues. The filmmakers don’t need help making that look appealing, but they could have spent more time making it interesting.