Funny Games (1998)
It’s a bit too flattering to the film to be enraged by Funny Games, the original Michael Haneke picture that’s inspired the shot for shot remake (also by Haneke) that is currently playing in theatres. Funny Games is a horror movie re-staged as an elitist, post-modern wank; think Straw Dogs by way of Godard, only stripped of the profundity of either, and you’ve got the general idea. People complain that the film is hypocritical and a bit of a cheat (and it is hypocritical) but the real problem is that it fails even by its own ambitions.
The film isn’t a cheat, as many have said. Haneke may claim to hate the exploitive, violent, largely American thrillers that are the source of his ire here, but he clearly gets off on them. The first hour of Funny Games is legitimately tense; Haneke, like any crank contemptuous of his audience, excels at the sort of audience manipulation that he supposedly resents, playing the quiet suburban dread against his viewers in a way that recalls early Polanski.
A family of three (Ulrich Mühe, Susanne Lothar, Stefan Clapczynski, all effective) drive toward their vacation home in a series of opening bird’s eye view shots that clearly recall The Shining and eventually stop at their neighbors to confirm that a golf date the next day is still on. The neighbors are strange, but tell the family that tomorrow is indeed still a go. The wife asks the husband who those two boys in the white were. The husband seems to remember one of the neighbor’s brothers having a boy in business school.
As the family unpacks, one of the young men knocks on the door and asks the wife if he could trouble her for a few eggs, the neighbors are making something. This conversation over the eggs, and its intangible slip from the banal to the terrifying (I had to re-watch it), is the one truly brilliant scene in the film. But the brilliance highlights the film’s schizophrenia: Funny Games claims to punish us for our jollies while really just giving us the jollies with a chase of self-delusion; embodied by such second-rate tricks as fourth wall shattering commentary and, most famously, a blunt, Brechtian switcheroo near the end of the film.
I went in to Funny Games with the mind to like it. I admit that I’m a bit of a contrarian at heart, if everyone hates a film I probably want to get something out of it. But Haneke’s tricks nurture the tension rather than subvert it. The first time one of the killers addresses us, with a wink as the wife discovers her unfortunate dog, is unsettling in a conventional thriller way, and doesn’t work as disruption or satire. The film’s ending has the same problem; it doesn’t work because it IS authentically cathartic. I’ve read Haneke’s interviews and he would appear to be an intelligent man, but does he honestly find his bad guys emerge victorious only to torture another family ending subversive? One can find a variation of this ending in any less hip to hate slasher film.
A few months ago I watched a similarly themed horror picture that unnerved me, and succeeded in shaming me for my appreciation of disreputable, gory pictures. That film was The Girl Next Door, a direct to DVD release that didn’t get a tenth of the new Funny Games’ ink because it was made by Gregory Wilson, an unknown filmmaker who is unfashionable to love or hate. That film dared the audience to actually consider the moral ramifications of the sort of blood lust that they normally clap for, Funny Games is just a self-hating, confused example of the usual usual, with none of the lasting power of Girl, much less Repulsion, or Knife in the Water or the original The Vanishing. The problem with the Brecht approach is that you can’t change most audience members (particular the audience Haneke’s targeting here) by appealing to their minds, it’s emotions that save the day in the film game. Haneke could have at least probably succeeded in his aim if he had the courage of his convictions. He shouldn’t have bothered to the end the film at all, cutting us off mid-sentence, no catharsis, no ending, nothing to
★★½
March 24th, 2008 at 8:43 am
This film was never on my radar and neither was the remake, I guess I did not miss much? I don’t know. I doubt I will ever know.
March 24th, 2008 at 8:50 am
“the real problem is that it fails even by its own ambitions.”
In a nutshell, that’s my main complaint about the movie. It simply doesn’t succeed at what it sets out to do. You could argue that it succeeds in starting the debate, but as I’ve said elsewhere, that’s the easy part. Actually bringing something new to the conversation is the hard part.
Great comparison to Girl Next Door, a much more effective film as far as getting a person to rethink their idea of entertainment.
On top of Haneke’s failure, I have to say the finger wagging really got under my skin after the fact. Listening to his smug interview on the DVD just intensified my dislike of the film. Irrational, I know, but there it is.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I get what you’re saying Craig, and I understand. I remember you writing on your site that the original is a speck better simply because it’s original, I havent seen the remake but I was guessing that Watts’ work might flesh the thing out a little. Any truth to that?
March 24th, 2008 at 11:00 am
The only reason I was interested in the remake in the first place was because of Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.
March 24th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Yeah Travis, I’m still up for the remake for the same reason. Even If Funny Games USA is a shot for shot recreation of Funny Games then its still better than 21 Grams, and that was worth watching once for Watts.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Good gosh, another Bowen. We’re growing like weeds. Or like leeks, as our likely common Welsh heritage would have it.
March 25th, 2008 at 4:34 am
Every new review makes me want this film (either the original or the remake) less…
March 25th, 2008 at 8:23 am
K.Bowen: Yeah, one doesn’t come across that name much in my parts (Va.) Thanks for stopping by!
March 25th, 2008 at 8:50 am
“I was guessing that Watts’ work might flesh the thing out a little. Any truth to that?”
No. But if you like Watts, it’s definitely worth watching the remake. Really though, it’s the same movie. There are some tonal changes because each performance is skewed a little differently and I was able to pick up on some nuances I missed in the subtitled version.
What was more interesting to me was seeing it with an audience because I wanted to see how they’d react. I think the movie loses a lot of its impact watching it by yourself on TV.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Chuck, if your family is from Virginia, then there’s a pretty good chance we’re distant cousins. If not, we’re related solely through cinema. Either way, I like your site and your writing.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Wow. Well you know what they say about small worlds, K. Appreciate the kind words too.
March 25th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Good review, Chuck, and most interesting because it takes a very different and unique perspective on Haneke’s film. Even though I come down harder on the film, your balanced review is actually the most sensible and reasoned I’ve read yet.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Fantastic perspective on a frustrating film. If nothing else, Funny Games is undeniably fun to write about and discuss.
I took a bit of a harsher stance than you, perhaps because I wanted to glean something more from the experience than I had. I confess I may have played into the flattery camp you mention in your first sentence, although I fully knew I was doing that, and the post-modern flavor of responding exactly as the film expects you to while acknowledging that expectation was just too much for me to resist.
We’ve actually carried on a structured debate over the film at my site, although I again recognize that devoting so much ink (or pixels, as it were) to the film in question is playing right into it’s hands. Oh well, I’m a sucker for a good debate.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Thanks for the heads up, I’ll have to check that out.