FUNNY GAMES
US/Austria, 2008, 111 minutes, Colour.
Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbett, Devon Gearheart, Boyd Gaines.
Directed by Michael Haneke.
Michael Haneke regretted that his 1998 Funny Games did not reach American audiences which, in his rather severe and finger-pointing opinion, was where it was needed. He has taken the opportunity to remake it exactly in English, with a better known cast, and set in New York state. Since it is almost an exact re-make (and this is what theatre directors do when they restage a play with a different cast, sometimes in the one season), it seemed the right thing to do to look up the 1998 review. It fits this version:
There have been many films about families terrorised in their homes, films like The Desperate Hours, with recognisable stars who help us share the frightening experience. The Austrian film from Michael Haneke, the director of Benny's Video, an alarming film about a boy obsessed with video violence and its consequences, is about a terrifying night as an ordinary family goes to their holiday house, where two seemingly ordinary young men come in and proceed to torment them physically and psychologically. Because the situations and characters are so ordinary, some audiences have condemned the film as exploitative. It is a very unpleasant cinema experience, but it is a dramatising of what happens and is a continual challenge to wonder why such seemingly purposeless malevolence can drive people to violate the innocent. A specialist film that may be too alarming for many audiences, but a powerful reminder of violence in the suburbs. Of interest now is the fact that in the original the father is played by the late Ulrich Muhe, the East German agent in The Lives of Others.
This version is very well acted. Naomi Watts is convincing as the brutalised wife and mother. Tim Roth (who twenty years ago might have been one of the intruders) is quietly effective as the husband and father. Devon Gearheart gives a strong performance as their young son. As the intruders, Michael Pitt (Murder by Numbers, Last Days) and Brady Corbet (the abused boy in Mysterious Skin) are frightening, all the more so for being initially ordinary and menacing. As with the original, the intruder Paul (Pitt) turns to the audience to eyeball them about what we are feeling; at another stage, after a shooting, the film rewinds and continues in a different way; it ends with a calm discussion between the two after their extraordinarily repellent behaviour about fiction and reality. Finally, Michael Pitt stares in a freeze frame at the audience.
Haneke makes very serious and strong films critical of the electronic media and its effect on makers and viewers (Benny’s Video), a sado-masochistic teacher (The Piano Teacher) and two OCIC and SIGNIS award winners, Code Inconnu and Cache (Hidden). He is a bleak and serious satirist in the sense that he is a perfectionist in his expectations of human nature and portrays, extremely, dramas which underscore his disappointments and these expectations. Concerning Funny Games, he has made the point about his visual assault on the audience that today screen violence has been tailored to what is ‘consumerable’.
1.The reputation of the film? Terror? Media? Exploitation? Serious attempt at portraying violence?
2.A film of the 90s made in the US 2007, Michael Haneke and his concern about the impact of media and his previous film, Benny's Video? The filming and style here? The psychotic boy looking at the audience and commenting to them?
3.The setting, the holiday house, the lake? Tranquility? The homes? The neighbours? The day, the transition to night? The morning and the culmination? The musical score?
4.The title, the behaviour of Paul and Peter? Inviting Ann and George and their son into the games? The bets? The sadistic games? The brutality? Their comments on funny games?
5.The opening, the couple driving to the house, mother and father and son, listening to the classical music, the guessing games - and Peter and Paul and the use of this later? The transition to contemporary rock and heavy metal? Arrival at the house, setting up the house, bringing the things in, going down to the boat, the son helping his father? Waving to the neighbours? The neighbours' visit, bringing the young man and introducing him? The tension?
6.The ordinariness, the fat young man coming to borrow the eggs, dropping the eggs, conversation with Anna? The beginnings of tension? More eggs? His behaviour, apologies?
7.The arrival of the other man? Seemingly innocent? Their conversation, even bland? The growing menace underlying it? The attack on Ann, verbal abuse? George coming back to the house, his son? The confrontation, Ann wanting them out? Their refusal, saying they were being put upon and were innocent? George hitting the young man? The retaliation with the golf club? His previous testing out the golf club - and the killing of the dog?
8.The gradual progression of the torment, George and his injury? The humiliation of Ann having to strip? The comments, her dressing again? The young boy and his terror? The verbal toing and froing? Food, the fat boy eating, wanting more food? The other boy cooking? The reaction of each of the family?
9.The little boy's escape, going through the water, trying to get help? His being recaptured? The beginning of the games - and the brutal shooting of the little boy? Suggestion rather than visualisation?
10.Anna and her growing desperation, trying to help? The verbal games, the television? The passing of time? George and his reaction? Begging them to go? Ann and the games and her losing, George being shot?
11.Ann and her getting away, on the road, hailing down the vehicles? Her being taken, brought back again? Tied up? Their seeming to relent, the night passing, the morning? Taking her on the boat, their taunts, pushing her over?
15.The grimness of the ending? The audience left with observing this kind of behaviour? Psychotic young men? Their talking to the audience, trying to make them complicit? The middle-class victims of middle-class terrorists?
