Funny Games (2008)

[MacGuffin]

[Pubrick]

in response to the tagline:

i don't want to watch this cos it will make me feel like shit (again). but naomi watts is really hot. that's all.

good poster.

[Astrostic]

for anyone in Boston, this Friday at the Harvard Film Archive, Haneke will be present to screen his new film (four months before it hits theatres) and then discuss it afterwards.  starts at 7:30pm, costs $15.

[bonanzataz]

that really sucks b/c i'm leaving boston thursday night. they're showing his movies all week i think. yesterday they played benny's video, but i got that from netflix two weeks ago and didn't go on principle.

[MacGuffin]

Love, Hate and Michael Haneke
By S.T. VanAirsdale, The Reeler

I should preface this item with a couple of advisories: First, it contains major spoilers for readers who haven't seen Michael Haneke's 1997 film Funny Games; and second, despite that film's irredeemably offensive stupidity, I have huge respect for Haneke as a filmmaker. I often assume Funny Games was Haneke's Faustian bargain for the decade of terrific work that followed. Or, more realistically, the 1997 version bought him the masterpieces Code Unknown and Cache, while his upcoming American remake paid off the merely excellent Time of the Wolf and The Piano Teacher. (I have yet to see the Naomi Watts/Tim Roth updating, but as a shot-for-shot retelling Haneke gleefully claims to be only eight seconds off the pace of his original, its own bankruptcy is almost certainly assured.)

To my regret, my fandom did not compel visits to the Museum of Modern Art's recent Haneke retrospective, among the most comprehensive of the filmmaker's 30-year film and TV career. I did, however, escape the Reeler HQ rubble long enough to catch Haneke screening and discussing Funny Games, the kick-off event of MoMA's nifty new Modern Mondays program. Rewatching reminded me of the genuine creepiness Haneke sustains over a good 80 or 90 minutes, during which a pair of white-gloved youths (Arno Frisch and Frank Giering) torment, torture and kill an upper-middle class family in their summer cottage. Amorality will always be tension's bitch (someone tell Eli Roth, whose films are pillow fights compared to Haneke's), and Funny Games applies its sadism in the most dynamic of ways: by teasing viewers with their own smugness. What we call "evil" can and often does win in this world, Haneke says unblinkingly; bad guys can and often do wear white.

In this way, Haneke loves to think of himself as a master manipulator. (His recent Times Magazine profile crystallized this for the ages.) But adherence to convention is not the same thing as smugness, which is why Funny Games' climactic upshot -- wife Anna (Susanne Lothar) steals a gun and blows one of her assailants away, only to have the survivor grab the VCR remote control, rewind the film, anticipate the coup and wrest the firearm away -- is such a gross betrayal. Almost to the end of his grueling psychological horror film, Haneke introduces a time machine.

In fairness, the MoMA audience clapped in support of her attack, and the filmmaker got the sense of deflation he wanted after its sudden reversal. (More on this later.) But this isn't exactly a spiritual precedent to the paralyzing movie-within-a-movie in Code Unknown, or the surveillance-cum-class war propelling Cache. Instead it's the cheapest, most embarrassing technical stunt of Haneke's career. Worse yet, it epitomized his own smugness Monday night while in conversation with MoMA curator Josh Siegel, who asked Haneke to explain the difference between obscenity and pornography.

"Cheating is not very nice": Funny Games director Michael Haneke "I think 'obscene' is something that breaks the rules," Haneke replied. "So from that point of view, I hope all of my films are obscene. Pornography, to me, is a consumer article." The comment drew an uncomfortable laugh from the MoMA audience, no dummies they, who deduced more overlap than separation between the qualities in Funny Games. But whatever; that ambiguity isn't the point as much the one guiding Haneke's differentiation between rule-breaking and bald-faced cheating. Code Unknown is a rule-breaker -- open-ended, impenetrable, cold to the touch. Funny Games is a cheat -- subverting its own well-established terms for the sake of its director's gratification.

"How do you mean cheating?" Haneke replied through his translator when I asked about the distinction.

"Rewinding the film isn't really manipulating the audience, is it?" I said. "It's a technical device you're using to change the story."

"I'm trying to show that you can manipulate an audience, and how you can manipulate," he said.

"Well, there's a big difference between Hitchcock and that, for example," I said, bringing up Siegel's own comparison from minutes before. "It's narrative versus technical." (More accurately, it's visual narrative as opposed to technical narrative, but such is l'esprit d'escalier.)

"Maybe you think it's cheating," he said.

"Yeah, I do," I said. "But what's the difference for you between someone who cheats and someone who breaks the rules? Or is there a difference?"

"I think cheating is not very nice," he said, smiling. "Actually, [my translator] happened to come in 10 minutes before the end, just at the moment the tape was being rewound. [She] heard the audience applaud, and [she] told me that reaction. And I said the same thing happened at Cannes when the film played for the first time. It was exactly the same reaction: People applauded, the tape was rewound and there was the most horrified silence. And that was the reaction that I wanted. People fell into the trap of applauding a murder -- someone being killed."

Hats off, I guess, for the rousing deconstruction of cinematic violence, but really: What does it prove? That audiences crave catharsis? That's a new one. That moralists are hypocrites? Shocking! That Haneke is a cynic's cynic? Did it really take a time-travel implement to convince you? Maybe the contrivance will be more at home in the American remake, itself a stunt whose very existence blots the accrued nuance of Haneke's complex, classic 10-year run. I wouldn't dream of second-guessing the man, but I can't say I'll miss this kind of bullshit when he's gone -- if he isn't already. I told you there were spoilers.

[Pubrick]

non spoilerful quote that sums up my feelings perfectly for this BAD BAD BAD well made BAD movie.

Hats off, I guess, for the rousing deconstruction of cinematic violence, but really: What does it prove? That audiences crave catharsis? That's a new one. That moralists are hypocrites? Shocking! That Haneke is a cynic's cynic? Did it really take a [gimmick] to convince you? Maybe the contrivance will be more at home in the American remake, itself a stunt whose very existence blots the accrued nuance of Haneke's complex, classic 10-year run. I wouldn't dream of second-guessing the man, but I can't say I'll miss this kind of bullshit when he's gone -- if he isn't already. I told you there were spoilers.

[SoNowThen]

Maybe the only thing it proves it that somebody has to keep doing it; keep reminding people over and over and over again every age cos we keep forgetting (wilfully or ingorantly, it doesn't matter).

And I think that's reason enough.

That being said, of course Funny Games is his weakest movie. But anybody who values Code Unknown over Piano Teacher and Time Of The Wolf has no fuckin' balls...

[Pubrick]

Maybe the only thing it proves it that somebody has to keep doing it; keep reminding people over and over and over again every age cos we keep forgetting (wilfully or ingorantly, it doesn't matter).

forgetting what? you don't need to be reminded of something that's obvious and hardly any more insightful with each new reminder.

i'll make a career out of reminding ppl that we need air to breathe. and that we all want love. and how clever i am for pointing that out.

[SoNowThen]

A new generation of commercial film goers (who will have not seen the original), having grown up with a kind of senseless, glamorized film violence, will hopefully be a little shocked or shaken by this.

It's a chance for a master director to take a relatively unknown work and present it in an interesting (and immediate) manner to a new audience. Just because the idea is obvious to US does not mean it is obvious or even recognized by the vast viewing majority. If the vast viewing majority remained so ignorant as to not breath, then, yes, we would have to keep reminding (the few we wanted to survive) to breath. Plus, the film never was about the utterance of an idea, but about the gruelling experience itself.

Nabakov came to America and did his own translating/re-writing of his earlier book Despair.

You can't see the merit in this? Seems that maybe you are perhaps dismissive of the tack that journalists will take with it, having to "describe" a film as an idea, then over-praising Haneke along those lines. But that's certainly not his fault...

[Alexandro]

I'm with SoNowThen on this one. Funny Games is about living this excruciating experience as if you were one of the victims. And Haneke does achieve his manipulation, cause the audience response is usually to internally beg for these guys to get off. When he does the remote control thing, if you're involved, it is truly frustrating . I don't see it as a gimmick at all. A gimmick tries to hide itself, it tries to slip right underneath you. What happens in Funny Games is completely in your face.

[Pubrick]

yeah, i guess you're right. it's like when a junkie dad knows he's a piece of shit and you're like, "Dad, why you gotta be like that?" and he just leans back with blood spouting out of his arm and his eyes rolling back in his head and he just goes "Aw, go fuck yourself" and passes out.

[SoNowThen]

After a number of years on the board, I can now take a non-response joke/taunt/insinuating-an-insult-but-not-really-an-insult response from P as almost the same as another person's positive agreement.

Moral victory points, all around.

;)

[MacGuffin]

Naomi Watts Q&A
The King Kong star discusses Funny Games and The Birds.
by Leigh Singer, IGN UK

Naomi Watts has become the go-to actress for tortured roles, from David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. to a giant ape's plaything in Peter Jackson's King Kong. Next up, more on-screen abuse in the LFF-featured US remake of Michael Haneke's Funny Games - and just maybe the upcoming remake of Hitchcock's The Birds

Q: Funny Games is a notorious shocker. What did you make of the Austrian original?

Watts: I saw the film at home with a girlfriend and was utterly shocked by it. I found myself having to talk a lot through it just because it was so damn creepy and difficult. It's not like you can say 'I loved the film' but you can have a really extreme reaction. What makes it worthy to me is that you think and talk about it for days afterwards.

Q: What's Michael Haneke's point about violence on film?

Watts: I felt he's speaking to us as an audience, saying we have blood on our hands. And he really messes with you - he sets everything up in that genre way and then never gives it to you. I think he's making you feel guilty for all the films you've bought into before and cheered on those violent moments.

Q: You've made a few remakes recently - The Ring, King Kong - why this one too?

Watts: Michael said that he originally made the film to reach American audiences and the fact that it didn't was a shame. So when he was offered this second opportunity to do it with English-speaking actors...

Q: Did a shot-for-shot remake make sense?

Watts: I did think it was odd but the whole point of this is it's an intellectual exercise. As an actor it's very hard because I knew his shots were the same and everything was blocked to work within those shots. So for lack of a better term I felt I was acting blindfolded and tied up, there wasn't anything organic about it.

Q: Isn't that very frustrating?

Watts: It's fun working with a director who really knows what they want, even if it's slightly annoying and difficult. There are many directors you work with who want to shoot something twenty different ways and you're like, 'Wait a second what am I doing here?' So it's nice to have someone that confident.

Q: Mullholland Dr., 21 Grams, Funny Games, even King Kong, you do seem to suffer a lot on screen...

Watts: It's actually fun to me. I'm not this dark twisted person. Yes. I have my demons and this is my way of exorcising them, it gets them out and better out than in. Actually I think that it's the comedians who are the darkest people on the planet, because they think life's just bloody hilarious!

Q: What's next, The Birds? Because that's more abuse and suffering.

Watts: It's under discussion - and another remake! Sorry!

Q: Did you not hear about Tippi Hedren almost losing an eye making the original?

Watts: Yeah, they threw birds at her across the lens, right? Hopefully things will be a little more sophisticated today!

[MacGuffin]

New Trailer

[Pubrick]

what i hate most is that ppl will watch this for the first time and start THE SAME MEANINGLESS debate all over again about the bullshit "point" that haneke was making when he first took this dump ten years ago. the point is such bullshit that the whole time, even now, the debate has been about whether it has a point or not. whether it's worth discussing or not.

either position leads to a two-second insight.. if NOT, then the response is "great lets get on with our lives." if YES, then it's ". isn't he clever! haha, uh,,..." *awkward silence*

this movie can be summarized as a giant fucking wink at the camera, while offscreen haneke is MASTURBATING FURIOUSLY. this is gonna be a lowpoint in what would otherwise be a great year for groundbreaking movies by real visionaries (speed racer, WALL• E, where the wild things are.. etc).