January 12, 2008
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 ...( read more)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.
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