Laurent Firode's film Happenstance (2000) is an extended meditation on the relationship between fate and perception. In a film with few real characters and no discernable plot, Firode would seem to be doing nothing more than expounding a form of applied chaos theory if it wasn't for the fact that this film is so much fun. The joy of this film comes with the god's-eye view afforded to the viewer. In a single day of Parisian urban interactions, none of the characters perceive the intricate web of chance that ties them together to the delight of the audience.
Happenstance uses chance relations to construct a paradigm which allows for a kind of karmic justice to flourish. As the human mind develops free will from the deterministic relationships of atoms and molecules, so justice emerges from a series of random seeming encounters. The lovers meet, as they were destined to. The cheating husband avoids harming his innocent son. Luc Gossard admits his failings, and while he loses his job, he gains his inheritance.
This perspective could be termed a sort of theoretical physicist's version of karma. Complex systems with seemingly random cause-effect relations are recognized to have very significant levels of emergent organization when seen from different scales. The human mind is one example; the formation of the solar system from clouds of cosmic dust is another. Biology can offer the concept of evolution, which is based on random-seeming interactions between predator and prey leading to extremely complex forms and survival mechanisms, from the venus fly trap to the giraffe. Is it so very unbelievable that a network of humans (intelligent particles) can exhibit an emergent intelligence of its own?
jonny muggs
