Michael Haneke

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December 21, 2021

Time of the Wolf (2003) on blu-ray from Strand Releasing



Following a global cataclysm, Anne (Isabelle Huppert) and her family set out for a safe haven at their holiday home. But, when they arrive, the home is already occupied by other survivors. Their hopes for safety are immediately dashed by a violent tragedy, which serves as a lesson to take nothing for granted and expect the worst in this new, harsh landscape. Accompanied by a fierce young boy (Hakim Taleb), the family eventually reaches a train station with the prospect of escaping.

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This line from Vassilis Kroustallis' review of Luzifer feels like a skeleton key to Haneke's oeuvre:

The film employs its Haneke touch in the way its main characters are meant to endure all and still be intimate to each other.

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Google's translation is wonky, but according to this article from a few weeks ago, it sounds like Haneke's English-language series "Kelvin's Book" may not happen, and that Haneke himself may be done :/

Incidentally, he was "not touched," stressed Michael Haneke, somewhat breathlessly , a good two weeks ago at the Austrian Film Museum, when, at the start of his Vienna retrospective, he was explaining the genesis of his cinema debut "The Seventh Continent" (1989). He spoke through the antivirus mask, audibly struggling, but he didn't like the idea of ��being taken for sentimental, even touched, by a certain shortness of breath.

[...]

It's a pity that Haneke's next big step, probably also due to the pressure of a pandemic cultural landscape, may have already failed for good. The dystopian ten-part series that Haneke wrote, planned and is said to have financed to a large extent in 2018/19 under the title "Kelvin's Book" would have meant the director's return to a fundamentally changed television. His last TV production, an adaptation of Kafka's fragmentary novel "The Castle", was 25 years ago.

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December

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A new TV documentary, Michael Haneke, Cineaste of our Times (2022) aired earlier this year

Produced by Fabienne Servan Schreiber and Laurence Miller, and directed by Marie-Ève de Grave, "Michael Haneke, Cineaste of our Times" will offer a portrait of the two-time Palme d'Or winner that mixes interviews with the filmmaker and his key collaborators (actors Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Huppert are both already confirmed) alongside excerpts from his films. Cinétévé also brought on Haneke's traditional producer Les Films du Losange as a co-production partner, offering the project in depth access to his oeuvre.