#975 Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997)

#975 Funny Games

1997 // Austria // Michael Haneke

 

Criterion Collection (LINK) / Letterboxd (LINK)

FUNNY GAMES is one of the most difficult films to watch. Plot-wise, it is basically a film of home invasion by two young psychopaths, probably at their early twenty, who sadistically torment and then eventually kill an entire family, including a boy and a dog. But that storyline won’t make the film stand out amongst the horror and slasher films. Its success comes from the genre subversion, FUNNY GAMES is a game for us. The audience is the participant whilst Michael Haneke is the host. Haneke controls the entire game, he sets his own rules by breaking the conventional cinematic rule. He let one of the psychopaths, Paul (Arno Frisch), speak to and acknowledge the audience directly.

The fourth wall is firstly broken by Paul’s wink directed to the audience. When Paul and his partner, ‘fatty’ Peter (Frank Giering), immerse themselves further into the pure pleasure aroused from torturing the family, Paul would taunt the audience, making remarks that acknowledge his existence in a fictionalized film. (‘We’re not up to feature film length yet.’) He, that also means Haneke who’s the creator (writer) of these characters, is the God overseeing the game as well as being the absolute winner. Hence he could rewind the film by a remote control, jumping back in time to prevent the lady in the house, Anna (Susanne Lothar), from shooting Peter.

Anna and her husband, George (Ulrich Mühe), and their young son (Stefan Clapczynski) exist in a different realm. They are the dramatic characters who’re exploited to provoke our fear, anxiety and, in other horror films, relief at the end. Same as Peter, who seems to be confused fiction with reality. They’re the models we are so accustomed with in slasher films, their blood and their pain are our ‘pleasure’. But the funny thing is, in Haneke’s kingdom, the villains win, and the ‘justifications’ for their action are displayed ostensibly, an act of revenge against bourgeoisie, a psychopath with an abused childhood. Haneke taunts us with all these archetypal reasonings but then abandons them almost immediately.

FUNNY GAMES is an experiment, partly an intolerance test, partly a self-reflexive horror film of which questions are constantly posed to the audience. Why are you watching the film? Are you getting any pleasure, if so do you detest yourself? Do you feel the film repulsive and reject it as an insult of pointless violence immediately? Haneke remade the film as an American version in 2007, I haven’t watched it but I heard it’s basically the same film shot-by-shot only with a different cast speaking in English. But what I wish is Haneke would ‘update’ the film, akin to his latest film HAPPY END (2017), with the incorporation of the smartphone. Now the extremists would live-stream their terrorist attack/ruthless massacre online, and there are always people interested in watching the video, perhaps out of curiosity. It’s diabolical to consider FUNNY GAMES as a morally ‘good’ film but I think if Paul and Peter had their cellphones instead of a dead wireless telephone, the film would go up to eleven on its examination of the medium. There’s no need to bet since we all know which side will win.

Film’s Trailer