‘Long Live My Happy Head’: Thessaloniki Review

Dirs/scr: Will Hewitt, Austen McCowan. UK. 2022. 89 minutes

Gallows humour of a deliciously dry Scottish strain distinguishes Will Hewitt and Austen McCowan’s Long Live My Happy Head, a tender but determinedly unsentimental chronicle of love in the midst of a death foretold. Initially focusing on how comic-book artist Gordon Shaw uses his craft to deal with a terminal brain tumour, this likeable documentary gains extra drama, depth and time-capsule value when the global COVID-19 pandemic blows up around the halfway mark.

In time-honoured British style, masculine emotion is acknowledged but not always displayed

World-premiering in London at the LGBTQ+ themed BFI Flare and near-simultaneously competing in the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s main slate, this well-balanced, audience-friendly affair should enjoy a healthy twin-track run at such events over the coming months. Small-screen play is also indicated for a film which is essentially conventional in form — talking-head interviews abound, Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres’ strings-and-piano-heavy score sometimes verges on the intrusive — but no less moving for all that. 

Having received the initial, grim diagnosis of his cerebral cancer at the age of 32, bearded-and-bald Gordon (opening credits chummily announce “a film by Will and Austen”) continues to maintain a relatively cheerful front in his late thirties. Regular MRI scans point to the seemingly inexorable growth of his tumour — christened Rick, this growth becomes a regular, antagonistic character in Gordon’s comic-strips, though the carping carcinoma’s role in the picture proves little more than an occasional cameo (the strips are brought to rough-edged life by award-winning Scottish animator Ross Hogg.)

Using his work as autobiographical therapy, Gordon is also sustained by his romantic relationship with an older American, Shawn. The latter’s full-time residence in California means their love is of the long-distance variety: as is increasingly the case in the globalised 21st century, they see each other more via Skype than in the flesh.

A gregarious chap who clearly thrives on social contact, Gordon struggles to cope with the harsh strictures of spring 2020’s UK lockdown — most harrowing of all is the awful possibility that, due to circumstances neither of them could have foreseen, he might never get to see Shawn again. Deploying a second unit in Virginia and delivering recording-equipment to Gordon’s Edinburgh flat, the directors are able to present both sides of this trans-Atlantic romance with direct immediacy.

Making their feature-length debut after collaborating on 2019’s little-seen short Sink Or Swim, Hewitt and McCowan draw heavily on the considerable experience and expertise of co-editor Barbara Toennieshen — whose previous credits include work on Laura Poitras’ Oscar winner CitizenFour. 

In time-honoured British style, masculine emotion is acknowledged but not always displayed; the editing, especially in the latter stages, maintains a tactful discretion and several key developments are relayed only via closing title-cards. This coda provides a surprisingly upbeat conclusion to a work which stresses the importance of seizing the day in an era when global developments have a nasty habit of catching us all unawares.