Dir.: Michael Haneke

[dog starts barking]
Anna: "He only wants to play a game.
Peter: Funny game."



Ever since Austrian CINEASTE - and I apologize, but I really need to use that word in capital letters - Michael Haneke tossed Funny Games like a bucket of vomit into film-goers' faces, the response has been brutally polarized. In fact, to say that this is one of the most polarizing films ever made wouldn't be too far from the truth. Some have described it as an unpleasant, pretentious exercise in stringing the audience along for its own cruel sake. Others - like my-proud-self - as one of the most brilliant, challenging and visionary cinematic pieces ever to come out of someone's mind. Which is what it is.

This film, unlike few others, exists to be experienced. Nothing can substitute for this. No synopsis, pseudo-intellectual review, or shot-by-shot analysis can do. The complete absence of a convenient frame-of-reference fucking cuts the thumbs off of would-be critics. Impossible to comprehend in summary and completely deprived of its visceral potency under academic examination, Funny Games communicates in unutterable terms of shattering vehemence and quadriplegic epiphanies. Haneke is an invisible puppet master, manipulating us not from above, but from within, using chains of our own. He tickles then tortures our sense of cinematic anticipation, constantly and sickeningly ahead of us, predicting possibilities, gruesomely envisaged, yet utterly hypnotic.

We watch Funny Games not because of what occurs, but because of what could conceivably occur. There is a certain inevitability to Haneke's storytelling, and he defies us, tempts us, to challenge his fabricated fate. Cinema's most sacred dogmas are challenged. Without obvious ellipses or editorial stratagems, we must endure every unendurable moment. Long, static shots conflict with our programmed understanding of Hollywood rhythm, and force us to reconsider these preconceived notions, not only in terms of the dramatic unfolding of violent events, but moreover on the repercussions of such events. In fact, more than just about anything, Haneke criticizes the conventional portrayal of violence in contemporary films, and especially the audience's resultant desires and expectations.

With one cathartic exception, or unless you count a slap in the face, there is no onscreen violence in Funny Games. It's all either off-camera or out-of-frame. So what's all the fuss been about these last eleven years, since the Cannes première? Well, what Haneke does is diabolically simple and monstrously clever. He leaves out the stuff that carnage-addicted film-goers want to see, and he lingers like a fascinated child over the stuff most thrillers leave out. What you see an awful lot of in Funny Games is emotional violence. You see the shock. The gathering disbelief, and then the chilling belief: "Yes, this is all really happening". The aftermath of a violent act. The agony of someone trying to move with a broken limb, of watching a loved suffer in front of one's eyes, filmed in agonizing real time. Most of the film, in fact, is pretty much real-time, though towards the end Haneke seems to sense that it's time to start wrapping things up.

The story is basic, perhaps Haneke's most simple plot: A bourgeois Austrian family - husband Georg (Ulrich Mühe), wife Anna (Susanne Lothar), and their young son Schorschi (Stefan Clapczynski) - arrive at their lakeside vacation cottage. Two polite young men, all dressed in white - Paul (Arno Frisch) and Peter (Frank Giering) - insinuate themselves into the cottage and then proceed to make the family's lives miserable. Funny Games thus announces itself as being in the same league as A Clockwork Orange, Last House on the Left, Straw Dogs, and other, lesser-known home-invasion thrillers. But is it really playing the same sport?

It isn't, and not just because Haneke obviously intends the film as a sharp statement on screen violence - that's only the surface. Haneke uses cinema to deny the primitive urges of cinema. Early on, Paul coerces Anna to take her clothes off, and though we don't want to see her nudity in this context, we are nonetheless primed to see it, because most exploitation films would use the sequence as an excuse for some "T&A". But the camera never moves below Anna's shoulders. It stays on her face, and, here and elsewhere, Susanne Lothar communicates volumes of rage and shame wordlessly. Haneke is teasing those who would've wanted to see Anna's breasts regardless of the context. He goes on to tease any of us who want anything from this film other than what he wants to give us. In a sense, he's playing Paul and Peter to us, except that unlike the family, we have the option of walking out (and this might be one of the most walked-out-on films in recent memory).

The elegantly simian Paul and the blubbery Peter present a familiar bad-cop-worse-cop dynamic: they're Alex and Dim from A Clockwork Orange. The film toys with a class conflict here, but it seems that the boys come from upper-crust surroundings, too. They don't resent this family for having the fancy car and the boat and the summer cottage; there's really no subtext to what they do - there's hardly any text. The selection of this family seems to be random. I couldn't help, though, thinking of the invaders as a reflection of the Anschluss in which Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany in 1933. (Is the family Jewish? We never find out - tellingly, when Anna is forced to say a prayer, she doesn't know any.) This only occurred to me fleetingly, though, by the third or fourth time I watched it; Haneke seems to have more on his mind than mere political allegory.

A shotgun is used three times, or maybe only twice. Haneke breaks the fourth wall; he breaks rules we may not even have been aware of. Some of the violent response to Funny Games is appropriate, I guess. If Haneke had decided to turn another genre inside out - say, if he'd made a comedy with a slapstick structure in which everyone manages to narrowly avoid tripping or spilling things, or if he'd made an adventure film in which nobody finds the treasure - there wouldn't be as much at stake, emotionally. But the power of cinema places us in the position of the suffering family, inside this thriller structure that fairly demands catharsis, retreat, revenge, resolution. Haneke gives us the mirror image of all of that.

A knife is used, too, out of frame, and we hear the screaming, but the camera is locked on someone else sitting on the same couch as the victim. We never see the results of the knife's work. Earlier, the camera follows Paul out to the kitchen as he fixes himself a snack; it stays on him as something horrible happens in the next room, and he continues calmly, slowly preparing his snack. "Goddammit, you're filming the wrong thing", you may want to scream at Haneke. But then we return to the living room and find that Haneke may have been cruel to be kind. Elsewhere, we focus on Anna or Georg as they're reduced to despairing animals. Georg's delayed-shock reaction to the living-room events is harder to watch than any of the bloodletting that isn't shown.

The remote-control scene will make or break the film for many. Though there is more torment to come, it is the final outrage, the ultimate middle finger held up to an audience expecting formula. It's also Haneke's way of both indulging his control and parodying it. He's the writer and director, he can do what the fuck he wants. If it's not what you want, he's saying, then fuck you, go rent Panic Room - which is a fine film, btw. The blasts of thrash metal that accompany the opening and closing credits are no mistake (nothing in the film is). Funny Games is immaculate art-house punk rock. It's a masterpiece for all the wrong reasons - it takes more than a century of cinema history by the neck, shakes it all around and then throws it into a corner and laughs at it.

I loved this film, really, from an aesthetic and analytical stance. I was into what Haneke was doing - which is true for years and years ago the first time I watched it and for now. It's not entertainment; it's something else. Haneke takes a rigidly controlled situation and uses it as a springboard for an assault on films themselves. Some have complained that the film's shots at violence-as-entertainment are facile and hypocritical. But what Haneke has actually done is to satirize the complex relationship between the story and the audience. On that level - can't you fucking see?! - it's a huge, gigantic triumph. And it joyfully succeeds at failing spectacularly on the baser level of delivering what it "promises".

And what, exactly, does it promise? Why are you watching this? You know the basic premise going in; what do you expect the film to be? And do we not usually praise thrillers for surprising us, for not giving us what we expect? And who's to say the storyteller is wrong just because he doesn't tell us the story we want to hear, in the way we want to hear it? Funny Games will always be the film that left a 12 or 13-year-old kid sleepless for days and introduced that same kid to a genius, natural-born artist named Michael Haneke.

To describe Caché is almost as difficult as watching and understanding the film itself. But the first thing to keep in mind is that Michael Haneke isn't exacly an entertainer. I knew that since La Pianiste, one of the most painfully depressing films I've seen to date, but perhaps most didn't. That must be the reason why so many people (who probably only watched it because of all the 'buzz' around it, of all the awards in Cannes) didn't quite get the brilliance of this film. That's why most of the comments I saw here, or the 3 star rating for that matter, doesn't surprise me at all. Those same people's only motivation watching it was to find out the 'whodunnit', who was the stalker, when the whole point of the film wasn't about the tapes! Of course Haneke creates that illusion, the illusion that the voyeur is the villain, the one terrorizing the couple. Is filming the outside of a house terror? Or did Georges Laurent saw in those tapes what he wanted to? What his repressed and hidden guilt told him to? Basically what Haneke does is to play with our minds, only giving us what he wants to. He is a master of mental manipulation...



So, Caché isn't something pre-programmed. It's what we see in it. Some saw a psychological thriller that desappointed them at the end, I saw a social critique, a uniquely/brilliantly shot, written and acted piece of cinema about guilt, paranoia, alienation, and about the impossibility of hidding from our past doings and our conscience. A film way ahead of its time!

SPOILER WARNING: Important events occurring in the third act will be mentioned in this review. I don't usually do this, but in this case - a purely exceptional one - I don't feel that knowing the outcome beforehand would, in any way, effect how one views the film, otherwise I would never mention them. But if you'd rather not know, and you want to see it - this concerns Haneke fans in particular - then try not to read this until afterwards.

Michael Haneke's theatrical debut, and the first instalment of his "emotional glaciation" trilogy - which would be completed with Benny's Video and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance - The Seventh Continent is a stunning examination of the effects of emotional isolation and the inability to communicate in the modern age.



Based on a true story, on events Haneke himself read in an ordinary newspaper, The Seventh Continent focuses on a married couple; George (Dieter Berner), a middling engineer, and his wife Anna (Birgit Doll). They seem to have the most typical and normal of lives: a modern house, a good car, nice clothes, comfortable furniture, a well-behaved daughter, etc., but, as we'll find out in the most drastic way possible, all those things, as deceiving as they might be, don't make them 'happy'. One day, their young daughter Eva (Leni Tanzer), realizing her parents' uninterest in each other's emotional well-being, pretends to be blind at school. This event works as a spark for what'll come next: melancholy followed by alienation, nihilism and self-destruction.

The film's opening shot shows us the couple sitting still and silent in their car as it passes through an automated car wash. For the first 10 minutes or so, we see no character's face straight-on. Haneke 'hides' them. Instead, we're given a series of tight close-ups on the objects of the Schobers' everyday routine: the alarm clock, the door handle, the breakfast table, the interior of the car, the supermarket till; and fragmented views of their bodies: a hand, an arm, the nape of a neck, the back of a head, a shoulder. It's a strikingly effective way of enunciating the film's theme, of emphasising the loneliness, isolation, sense of disjunction, and alienation of each family member.

The effect of this technique, reminiscent of Robert Bresson (one of Haneke's major influences), is disorienting at first, but is extremely effective at presenting the characters as the sum total of their routines and interactions with technology. It's a cold and clinical approach that strips the characters of all individuality outside of their actions and the film's first act manages to inform us about the process of dehumanization that eventually leads to the horrific finale without explicitly trying to explain it.

Haneke divides the narrative in three parts, each of them a year in the family's life (from 1986 to 1988). Every part - and every year - starts off the same way. An alarm clock radio turns itself on at 6, the couple wakes up, says 'good morning' to each other and gets out of bed. Then it's the same routine: opening the curtains, brushing their teeth, getting dressed, waking up their daughter, feeding the fish, having breakfast, dropping the daughter at school and going to work. For three years, that's all they do. And the worst part is that most people's reaction to this will probably be something like: "So what? That's what everyone does".

Like Haneke said of his characters, "They don't live. They do things." Existence for them consists of numerous involuntary, yet seemingly necessary actions. Nothing else. The only thing that makes this film different than real life is the fact alone that these characters actually dare to ask the dangerous question, "Is this all there is?". It is ultimately the tedium and sameness of a bourgeois lifestyle that can lead to a breakdown, a crackup, a lashing out, or worse, especially once we reach the point in which we fatalistically realize that "our whole life is the sum total of these gestures."

It's in the final act that it becomes truly sickening and horrifying - scarier than any Horror film you can think of - that the events are based on an actual occurrence. Although Haneke shows us the possibility of a 'happy ending' - with the family's wish to move to Australia - we soon realize that the only fate they ever considered was destruction and death ('The Seventh Continent'). Georg quits his job and sells the car. They withdrawal all money from their bank and write a letter to Georg's parents.

As they literally tear their house and its contents apart - clothes, furniture, photos, even the aquarium - we rarely see who is doing the destruction. Instead, Haneke's camera holds on the hands or the tools (that we remember seeing Georg buy for no apparent reason) that are doing the smashing, breaking, tearing, pounding - or, in the case of the banknotes, the flushing down the toilet.

The destruction of possessions is clearly a cathartic moment. Such an action - flushing all of one's life savings down the toilet - can only be seen as a blatant attack on the moral bankruptcy of the capitalist system. More than food, water and air, money is the crucial element of survival in the modern world. By highlighting the horror of seeing the family destroy their home and possessions - many walked out of the theater at Cannes, just like Haneke had predicted - the value society places on material things is stressed to the point that these actions are nearly as disturbing as the collective suicide that was yet to happen.

Which the couple does with the same intensity and deliberate 'methodicalness' with which they have lived their lives. With no political overtones they seem to embody the perfect fascist mentality - to do things with orderliness, precision, science, economic gestures, and apathy. Limited/stupid viewers will - like they have - see in The Seventh Continent a pro-suicidal message, that's kind of unevitable... The rest will, I hope, understand its real message. A film that will haunt you for days, months, years... Perhaps the rest of your life.

Anna: "Why don't you just kill us?
Peter: [smiling] You shouldn't forget the importance of entertainment."



Many people - lovers and haters equally - have asked themselves why is Michael Haneke remaking his 1997 film of the same name, on almost a shot-by-shot basis. All those who think the answer is his need for success and acclaim in the U.S. - which he already has in the entire world, the U.S. included - or to increase his worldwide fan base, have no idea how delusional they are. When the original Funny Games shocked a Cannes première audience a decade ago, Haneke knew it was a European film with a violent American streak. It was his "reaction" to mindless American thrill-kill films. Yet Funny Games remains largely unknown in North America. Haneke is curious about how people might respond to an English-language version set in the U.S. Why not?

In either incarnation, Funny Games is a profoundly unpleasant experience. Period. How could Haneke be looking for glory or recognition when he decides to literally remake one of the most misunderstood and uncomfortable films ever made in a country that practically invented cinema as a form of entertainment? Can't you see? The man is one of the most brave filmmakers alive! Funny Games was always meant as a comment on America's insatiable desire for on-screen violence, whether through films, television, or video games. Now it has been transferred to its spiritual home, the almighty United States.

Even the Long Island setting in this shot-for-shot remake appears identical. Almost everything does - the cottage, the cottage gate, the car, the living-room, the kitchen, the golf clubs. I can't help to feel that there's a certain amount of art in reconstructing all that in such a perfect way. The most significant difference is the cast. Though some will surely describe the central duo as American, they aren't. Or that isn't their country of origin, since the Australian Naomi Watts (who calls New York home) and British Tim Roth (ditto for Los Angeles) play the beleaguered couple in the new iteration. Both are nearly - and this nearly is very important - as good as Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe. If the kid, Devon Gearhart is less effective, his role is also less critical.

That leaves the home invaders. Or torturers. Or audience surrogates. Haneke never defines exactly what these malicious young men represent. This time around, they're played by Michael Pitt (Paul) and Brady Corbet (Peter), who co-starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin (and gives a similar performance, though what seems endearing there becomes fear-inducing here). Their acting is fine, although Frank Giering and Arno Frisch (Haneke's Benny's Video) were better, not least because they look less alike; Pitt and Corbet are fair-haired, moon-faced fellows, even if the former is taller.

Like its forerunner, the film opens with a drive to the countryside. Despite the serene setting, Haneke signals his sadistic intentions by shooting the scene from a God's-eye view - an aerial tracking shot with tons of The Shining shades. Consequently, the pleasant voices of the vacationers register before they do. Then DP Darius Khondji - who shot Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights before - moves into their SUV and onto their hands before revealing their beaming faces.

Though the film eschews a traditional soundtrack, it begins and ends with music. First, some relaxing Handel and Mozart while Ann and George play a nice classic music guess-game, then a jarring segue into the shrieking strains of John Zorn's "Naked City". The ending returns to Zorn and the frame-filling title: FUNNY GAMES (U.S.) in bright, bloody red letters. Quentin Tarantino used a similar typeface for Kill Bill: Vols. I and II, and yet Haneke describes his fourth feature, the original Funny Games, as "an anti-Tarantino film" - which, I hope you got, isn't an insult to Tarantino. It's what this is all about. Tarantino is a fine filmmaker, but an American one. Meaning? He's obsessed with violence, even if he makes great cinema out of it. In both cases, Jean-Luc Godard's distinctive approach to typography comes to mind.

Funny Games, like its predecessor, isn't meant to echo reality. Most of the developments that transpire are "plausible", to borrow Paul's word the first time he breaks the fourth wall to ask us the outcome we wish for the story and the film, even
if he and Peter aren't intended to resemble actual human beings, and Haneke doesn't burden any of his characters with a backstory. The context is that which appears on screen. The past doesn't exist, only a present that threatens to repeat itself indefinitely.

Plenty of other films about media violence offer more thrills than Funny Games, notably David Cronenberg's visceral Videodrome, but there lies the barrier. If a picture about violence is too "entertaining", Haneke seems to suggest, then it just perpetuates the cycle, feeding the need for more and more violent product, regardless as to whether that "product" offers a critique of its own content or not. And yet Haneke's project is no less problematic and self-contradictory. Like Cronenberg's A History of Violence, it's a violent film about violence. Similarly, most films about sexual exploitation tend to be exploitative themselves. To his credit, Haneke pulls off a more compelling home invasion scenario in Caché, except that film is more concerned with guilt and paranoia, and it does feature one particularly shocking shooting.

Funny Games, on the other hand, is so unremittingly violent - even if the most graphic scenes occur off-screen - that it becomes numbing, but that's clearly intentional. At the very least, Haneke deserves praise for the purity of his vision and for the fact that he made a near-perfect, almost 100% accurate recreation of a film which was already his creation. That's what makes this film more than just a another remake. Just in case you're wondering.

For those familiar with the Austrian original, there's little point in revisiting this material - you'll note I haven't mentioned a word about the plot - except as an exercise in compare and contrast. Though Mühe bests Roth, the character of Georg(e) serves the same powerless purpose in both entries. Unlike George Sluizer's Hollywood remake of The Vanishing, Haneke hasn't slapped an all-American happy face on his grim tale, and it's unlikely he would've invested the time if he didn't have complete control - thus establishing a neat link between the director and his invaders.

That said, Funny Games hits the States reduced and in the wake of Saw, Hostel, and their sequels and knock-offs. Does the popularity of such torture-porn-fests render Haneke's provocation more relevant than ever - or more redundant? Further, did it help to influence them? As Salon's Andrew O'Hehir has observed, "[1997's] Funny Games (...) has itself become a cult movie among horror fans in English-speaking countries." Will the US version inspire further cheap imitations? In other words: Is Michael Haneke and his post-modern morality tale part of the problem or part of the solution? Is the joke on him or us? And who started the damn thing in the first place?