Film: Funny Games
Release date: 25th May 2009
Certificate: 18
Running time: 104 mins
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering
Genre: Horror/Drama/Crime/Thriller
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: Austria
When Michael Haneke’s Funny Games was first screened at Cannes in 1997 audience members (including a few critics) were so shocked they walked out halfway through. The film has continued to provoke and divide audiences ever since, and has recently been remade by Haneke scene-by-scene in English, primarily, he says, to reach an American audience. Although containing many elements of classic horror, the film was never intended to be regarded as such, but more as a moralistic comment about the influence of media violence on society.
A middle aged couple Anna (Susanne Lothar) and Georg (Ulrich Mühe), and their young son drive out to spend a quiet week at their lakeside house in the middle of nowhere. There they are approached by two mysterious young men in white gloves (Arno Frisch and Frank Giering) whose polite behaviour turns increasingly threatening and violent.
Over the course of a night, they put the family through a series of sadistic games, bordering on torture, with apparently no reason or explanation. The men are polite and courteous, totally without remorse and regard their victims with mild amusement as the games grow increasingly degrading and unpleasant.
We are complicit in the violence as the aggressors repeatedly turn to the camera and address us directly with encouraging remarks and knowing winks. Also, in one particularly memorable scene, the characters refuse to accept developments in the story and actually take action to interrupt and dictate the flow of the film…
The message in Funny Games is very simple and very direct. Haneke presents us with two hours of realistic, sadistic brutality and forces us to examine our reactions. In a world awash with media images of violence and our seemingly insatiable appetite for more of it, Haneke confronts us with exactly that in its raw, unvarnished state. It’s disturbing and unpleasant to sit through, and this is exactly the point. Violence is not an adrenalin-pumping Hollywood explosion in Haneke’s eyes - it is disturbing, it is unpleasant, and we’re not allowed to forget for a minute exactly what it is we’ve been cheering for all these years.
Here, violence has a face, or rather two faces in the form of Paul and Peter (their names change several times throughout the film). They conform to no bad-guy stereotypes - they are polite, courteous, witty and calm. In one scene, they offer (to their victims and to us) several possible background stories for themselves which could explain their behaviour, then reject these as obviously untrue or immaterial. Haneke questions, through Paul, “what is it that would make this behaviour acceptable to you?” It’s another uncomfortable question that everyone watching Funny Games will have to answer themselves.
The camerawork is largely motionless and impassive, compounding the clinical atmosphere of the film and, at times, giving the sense that we’re watching the events unfold through CCTV. The acting throughout is impeccable, particularly from Susanne Lothar as Anna who is really put through the emotional mill, driven to the end of her nerves by the ordeal and the callousness of her aggressors. Given the nature of their characters, Arno Frisch and Frank Giering, as the two strangers, don’t have too much to go on but do a very good line in creepy, polite menace.
Haneke’s direction of the violence itself is masterful, or rather the implication of violence in that (aside from one notable instance) nothing is shown on screen - although you’ll later swear you saw all manner of horrible things take place, you didn’t actually see any of them. This is an exceptionally clever trick in a film about violence and attitudes towards violence. No hand-wringing, outraged moral guardians can accuse Haneke of making an exploitative piece splattered with gore and unnecessary brutality; on closer analysis, you realise the violence you believed you have witnessed was completely in your own head.
It’s all very clever stuff, but whether it makes for a good film is questionable. One feels as if what Michael Haneke really wanted to do was to make a violent horror film full of tension and old-school terror but didn’t quite have the courage of his convictions and made Funny Games instead. It’s a shame as well, as there’s some genuinely nail-biting moments to enjoy, such as a midnight chase scene between Paul and the young boy which owes as much to John Carpenter’s Halloween as it does to cutting edge European cinema.
A thought-provoking, unsettling piece. Not so much a film, more a well made lecture aimed directly at you. If you’re interested in examining your own attitude to screen violence then Funny Games is definitely worth a look, but be warned: if you’ve ever guiltily enjoyed a violent film, you’re likely to emerge feeling like a bad person who’s been given a thorough telling-off. That’s not exactly what I’m looking for in entertainment but it’s a powerful experience none the less. LOZ
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