Michael Haneke remaked his own "funny games",now in english.why?!?!

it was so good, it needed to be made a 2nd time

yeah,like psycho...

NYT Magazine profile on Sunday too.

LONG profile.

I saw the preview a few weeks ago and didn't like the looks of it at all.

If it ends up being a shot for shot remake, it'll easily be one of the most fucked up and nasty and plain weird Hollywood films I can think of. Good cast.

man that is one heavy duty movie. very curious about the us remake.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I think making a film in a particular culture and a particular year, and then re-filming it shot for shot in a different culture and a different year does not sound promising. I mean, seeing the preview for this new Funny Games in 2007, after a few years of Saw and more sadism in film (a step beyond the Woo-ish ultraviolence of the 90s), and in a time of war instead of a time of relative peace...it's just different than it would have seemed 10 years ago, and played out.

That said, I loved Code Unknown.

He's re-making it for the same reason he re-made "Benny's Video" as "Cache" and the same reason he doesn't make any movies in German anymore: he's a hypocrite coward going back through his films and removing any autobiographical clues that might implicate his own love for violence (the Boys in White were Austrian locals terrorizing rich Germans in the original film, ha ha take that you Piefkes) so that, as re-made, they become become mere well-shot fingerpointing exercises.

Also given that the film appears to be a shot-by-shot remake of the original, the trailer is truly pathetic.

-- Nubbelverbrennung, Monday, 17 September 2007 18:45 (1 week ago) Link

If like me, you hate him, read the NYT Mag thing and you'll hate him even more. The latest: Narrative storytelling can't be trusted because of the Nazis.

It could have been worse, he could have blamed the Jews

that's an incredibly disingenuous reading of what he says, morbius.

i love caché and i love haneke even more after reading that article.

Man Michael Pitt loves him some Leopold & Loeb.

I enjoy his camera stuff but his "themes" are pretty dinky.

He is a self-loathing horror nut.

... but his recent films have been fairly interesting.

The people who see his films do not see horror films like Saw (ie, me).

As to whether I'm being a dis-ingenue or not (his critical points about Tarantino and Stone sound decent, but then PF and NBK aren't particularly about 'real' violence)...

Minister of Fear
By JOHN WRAY

One evening last November at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn, Michael Haneke was struggling with the realities of working in America. It was the second-to-last day of shooting on “Funny Games,” Haneke’s first English-language feature, and the mood on set was approaching mutiny. A seemingly straightforward sequence of shots had become bogged down in technical concerns, and the word was that no additional studio time would be forthcoming. After 12 hours of nearly continuous work, the crew looked glassy-eyed and resentful, especially those among them — hair and makeup, production assistants and grips — whose job at that moment consisted mainly of standing around. Adding to the frustration were the multiple language barriers on set: the crew was American, the cameraman French and the director himself, with his elegant black suit and air of patrician reserve, as Austrian as Austrian can be. Only the children, the actor Devon Gearhart and his stand-in, Gregory Clifton, seemed motivated and eager to please. But by law, the child actors couldn’t work past 10 that night, and 10 was getting closer all the time.

The shot in question was relatively simple, if working with child actors can ever be considered simple: Gearhart, in the role of Georgie, a terrified 8-year-old hiding in an empty house, hears a noise behind him, turns and crosses a dimly lighted room. Once the not-inconsiderable lighting issues were resolved, however, a new problem emerged. Gearhart, who had repeatedly impressed with his ability to call forth strong emotion at will, seemed incapable of looking frightened. Haneke — a tall, owlish man whose neatly trimmed white beard makes him look a little like an haute couture Gandalf — took a grandfatherly approach with Gearhart, speaking to him with sympathy and patience, but his English often failed him. As it grew clear that his actor was running out of gas, the strain on the director became obvious. Then suddenly, Haneke sat bolt upright, stepped quickly over to the boy and began jumping up and down in front of him like a bewildered chimpanzee. In a few seconds the two of them were bobbing up and down together, giggling and panting. Wide awake now, out of breath and not a little startled, Gearhart nailed his performance on the very next take. Returning to the director’s chair, Haneke shot me a mischievous grin.

It’s not a little disconcerting, given the remorselessness of Haneke’s films, to come face to face with the director’s goofy side. Neither he nor Gearhart, who turned 12 in May, seemed the tiniest bit bothered by the presence on a nearby set of a perfect facsimile of the boy’s headless body, artfully arranged against a blood-spattered living-room wall. Later, when I mentioned the tense atmosphere during that day’s shoot, Haneke sighed and brought a finger to his lips. “We have a saying in Austria,” he said, his smile not entirely hidden behind his snowy beard. “The sewage is up to our necks already — whatever you do, don’t make waves.”

Making waves, however, is what Haneke has become famous for. Over the last two decades, the director has developed a reputation for stark, often brutal films that place the viewer — sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly — in the uncomfortable role of accomplice to the crimes playing out on-screen. This approach has made Haneke one of contemporary cinema’s most reviled and revered figures, earning him everything from accusations of obscenity to a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art next month. “Funny Games,” the movie Haneke was shooting in New York and Long Island, is the American remake of a highly controversial film by the same name that he directed in 1997. It was from its beginnings targeted at the American moviegoing public — and no other word but “targeted” will do. “Funny Games” is a direct assault on the conventions of cinematic violence in the United States, and the new version of the film, with its English-speaking cast and unmistakably American production design, makes this excruciatingly clear. More surprising still, Haneke remade this attack on the Hollywood thriller for a major Hollywood studio, Warner Independent Pictures, and refused to alter the original film’s story in the slightest.

The premise of “Funny Games” is simple: a likable, prosperous, well-adjusted family — played, in the version to be released early next year, by Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Devon Gearhart — is visited at the family summer house by two well-dressed young men claiming to be guests of the neighbors. Over the course of the next hour, these two polite, articulate strangers force the family to take part in progressively more sadistic contests, periodically stepping outside the film’s action to speak to the viewer directly. The technique of the “dramatic aside” is nothing new — Brecht made great use of it, Shakespeare built whole plays around it and the ancient Greek chorus served no other purpose — but in the context of an otherwise straightforward thriller, it’s profoundly disturbing. The young men make no secret of their disdain for their victims; but the bulk of their contempt is reserved for the audience. The experience of watching “Funny Games” is not unlike watching snuff-porn clips late at night in your bedroom, only to have your mother or Jacques Lacan switch the light on periodically without the slightest warning. That was my own experience, at least, and Haneke seemed delighted to hear it.

“ ‘Funny Games’ is an anti-genre film,” Haneke told me over lunch on his last day in New York. “It moves like a thriller, it has a thriller’s structure, but at the same time it comments on itself. A movie is always a manipulation, regardless of whether it’s a biopic or a romantic comedy, and ‘Funny Games’ takes this manipulation as its primary subject. So you were perfectly right to feel uncomfortable.” This last statement was punctuated by Haneke’s trademark goofy laugh. Shooting wrapped on “Funny Games” the day before, and any traces of the stress I’d seen on set had vanished. “People in the film industry underestimate their audience,” he continued. “I believe the viewer is fundamentally more intelligent than most films give him credit for, but only if you give him the opportunity to use his brain.”

From the very start of his career, Haneke’s films have been calculated to shatter the viewer’s complacency to a degree rarely seen since the early work of Mike Leigh or perhaps since the politicized days of the French New Wave. Haneke’s characters are adrift in a profoundly dysfunctional world, one in which consolation and insight are equally hard to come by. One of Haneke’s greatest successes, both critically and commercially, was “The Piano Teacher,” adapted from a novel by Elfriede Jelinek. The film, released in 2001, stars Isabelle Huppert as Erika Kohut, an aging, severely repressed classical pianist who begins a disastrous, sadomasochistic affair with her most promising student. The film won the grand jury prize at Cannes and best acting awards for both of its leads, and it drew packed crowds at art-house theaters across Europe and the United States. As Haneke’s prominence grew, however, so too did resistance to his methods. He has repeatedly been criticized as a purveyor of shock cinema, not so much for the violence in his films (little of which is explicit) as for the often brutal way in which the meaning of that violence is explored. “Violence in my films is shown as it really is,” Haneke has said. “The suffering of a victim. The viewer comes to see what it means to act violently — that’s why the films are often experienced as painful.”

At times, “painful” seems almost an understatement. In an infamous scene from “Benny’s Video,” Haneke’s second feature, a teenage son plays his parents the videotape of a murder he committed while they were away on vacation. The audience has witnessed the murder once already, but this second viewing, with the parents themselves now a de facto part of the audience, is vastly more affecting. Why, I asked Haneke, was the experience so different the second time? “When you see the killing first, you’re too shocked and bewildered to let the fact of it sink in,” he replied. “But the moment that the parents, with whom one naturally identifies, sit down to watch the video, one begins to see the murder in its social context: the discrepancy between the act we are witnessing and normal social behavior becomes clear.” He smiled. “It’s always important to keep in mind who’s watching.”

This question of who’s watching — both within the film and outside of it — is one of Haneke’s chief obsessions. For most successful directors, whether in Europe or America, the audience exists to be entertained; for Haneke it seems to exist to be confronted. Where another director might cut tactfully away, Haneke’s camera lingers. His screenplays, which he always writes himself, have a sense of purpose about them that only polemic works of art can have. The ideology that underlies Haneke’s filmmaking is a deeply personal, idiosyncratic one, but it’s an ideology nonetheless. Haneke is a man very much at odds with the accepted values of the industry he works in, and if you ask him, he’ll be happy to tell you why.

“Political manipulation is rampant in the American media,” Haneke told me over lunch in downtown Manhattan last winter. “It’s present in the movies too, of course. It’s everywhere. I teach filmmaking in Vienna, and I like to show my students ‘Triumph of the Will,’ by Leni Riefenstahl, then something by Sergei Eisenstein — ‘Battleship Potemkin,’ for example — and then ‘Air Force One,’ the movie in which Harrison Ford plays the U.S. president. Each of these films has a distinct political agenda, but all make use of exactly the same techniques, all have a common goal — the total manipulation of the viewer. What’s terrible about the Harrison Ford film, though, especially terrible, is that it represents itself as simple entertainment. The audience doesn’t realize there’s a message hidden there.” Haneke sat back and shook his head gravely.

The difference between Haneke’s agenda and that of films like “Air Force One” was cast into sharp relief at the premiere of the original “Funny Games” in Cannes. “It was funny — funny for me, at least — how the theater reacted to Anna’s shooting of Dickie,” Haneke told me, referring to a scene late in the film when the heroine turns the tables on her captors. “There was actual applause at first — then, when the scene is rewound, making the audience conscious of what it’s cheering for, the theater went absolutely silent. There was a general realization, even though the victim in this case was a villain in the film, that they’d been applauding an act of murder.” Haneke frowned slightly at the memory, but the frown appeared to be one of satisfaction. “I’m hoping for something similar when ‘Funny Games’ shows here.”

The decision to remake his signature work in America with an A-list cast caused considerable controversy among hardcore cinephiles, not least because of Haneke’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s most outspoken critics. Haneke was quick to defend himself. “Of course I’m a critic of the studio system,” he said, as if it were unthinkable not to be. “But that doesn’t mean that one can’t work within that system. ‘Funny Games’ was always made with American audiences in mind, since its subject is Hollywood’s attitude toward violence. And nothing has changed about that attitude since the first version of my film was released — just the opposite, in fact.” When I asked whether the average American moviegoer was likely to appreciate having his attitude adjusted, Haneke-style, the director thought for a moment, then threw up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ve been accused of ‘raping’ the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely — all movies assault the viewer in one way or another. What’s different about my films is this: I’m trying to rape the viewer into independence.”

Haneke was born on March 23, 1942, in Munich, to a genteel theatrical family — his father, Fritz Haneke, was a respected actor and director, and his mother, Beatrix von Degenschild, was an actress in her own right and a daughter of the local aristocracy. After the war, his family moved to Wiener Neustadt in Lower Austria, a half-hour’s train ride from Vienna. As soon as he graduated from high school, Haneke lost no time in moving to the capital, where he studied psychology, philosophy and — naturally enough — theater at the University of Vienna; if the teenage Haneke had had his way, however, he might never have directed a film.

“Originally, I wanted to be a pianist,” Haneke told me. “But luckily for me, my stepfather was a professional musician, and he took me aside one day and said, ‘Look, Michael, it’s very nice that you’re playing piano all the time, but I have to tell you that you’re never going to make it.’ ” When I expressed sympathy for this setback, Haneke frowned and shook his head. “No, no,” he said quickly. “I’m grateful to my stepfather for his honesty. There’s nothing worse than a moderately talented musician.”

Well meant or not, his stepfather’s intercession freed the young Haneke to pursue his other great passion, one that arrived like a thunderbolt in the winter of 1948. “I must have been 6 years old when I saw my first film,” Haneke told me when I visited the spacious apartment in Vienna’s eighth district that he shares with his wife, Suzie, a dealer in antique jewelry and silver. “It was Laurence Olivier’s ‘Hamlet.’ I remember the gradual darkening of the theater, the slow, somber opening of the curtain, the first bleak images of the sea-locked castle and the even bleaker music that accompanied them. My grandmother, who was sitting next to me in the theater, told me years later that she had to take me out almost at once, because I began screaming in terror. From that moment on I was hooked.” I felt obliged to ask Haneke whether it struck him as odd that a child so easily disturbed by images on-screen would grow up to make movies often described as unbearable to watch. After a moment’s silence, he answered, “Not at all.”

Haneke’s second pivotal moviegoing experience came more than a decade later, when he saw Tony Richardson’s “Tom Jones” as a student. “Suddenly, about a third of the way through the film,” Haneke told me, “the hero, played by Albert Finney, stops in the middle of a chase scene, turns to face the camera — in other words, the viewer — and addresses a few offhand remarks to the audience. Nothing especially racy, but by that simple gesture he shocks the viewer into self-awareness.” Though he didn’t know it at the time, that moment marked a loss of cinematic innocence that would indelibly mark every film he went on to direct. “After ‘Tom Jones,’ I began to look behind the mirror, so to speak — to see the cinema with different eyes, and to distrust the storytellers, who claimed to be serving up real life. But my hunger for stories was stronger than ever — I wasn’t sure what I was looking for from cinema, but I knew it would have to offer the magic of my first moviegoing experiences without turning me into a passive, voiceless victim of the story — which is to say, of the people behind the story. I wanted movies that enchanted me without exploiting me.”

At certain moments, a conversation with Haneke can feel like a clandestine meeting with the leader of the Cinematic Liberation Front, and this was one of them. Even the word “exploitation” has taken on a kind of lurid appeal — blaxploitation, sexploitation — in the current cultural landscape, and his argument struck me as both romantic and dated. When I said as much — tactfully, of course — to Haneke, he simply nodded. Then I realized that was exactly his point.

Haneke may have become serious about movies early on, but decades would pass before he would direct his first feature. After attending the University of Vienna, he returned to Germany in 1967, where he spent the next four years working for Bavaria’s equivalent of the BBC as a producer before becoming a freelance screenwriter and director. His first theatrical feature film, “The Seventh Continent,” made at the age of 47, was released on the big screen only after having been rejected by a German television station. It’s not hard to guess why the network passed. The film follows the final days and hours of an archetypal middle-class family who have decided, for no apparent reason, to destroy all their possessions and commit suicide. Many of the hallmarks of Haneke’s style are already in evidence: the deliberate pacing, the static, unflinching camera, the dominance of blue tones over red, and the placement, à la Hitchcock, of the most grisly violence tantalizingly out of view. Two equally stark studies in violence and alienation — “Benny’s Video” and “71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance” — followed “The Seventh Continent,” and the three films together, which have since come to be known as “The Glaciation Trilogy,” earned him a measure of admiration outside the German-speaking world. It was his next film, however, that made cinephiles the world over take notice. That film was “Funny Games.”

“Funny Games” occupies a unique place in Haneke’s body of work, not least because of his decision to shoot it twice. “Originally, I approached Michael about optioning ‘Funny Games’ for some other director,” Chris Coen, the film’s producer, told me. “And Michael’s reply was that he’d do it himself, but only if I could get Naomi Watts for the lead. I hadn’t thought about him wanting to do it, to be honest. But he said very clearly that ‘Funny Games’ was the one film of his that he’d allow no one else to direct.” Hollywood has a long and hallowed tradition of buying the rights to art-house hits and refashioning them to suit its own ends — in fact, the director Ron Howard recently acquired the rights to Haneke’s “Caché” — but Haneke’s decision to remake his own film surprised fans and colleagues alike. The peculiarity of the project seems to have been part of its appeal. “To my knowledge, no one has ever remade his own film so precisely,” the director told me in Vienna, with an unmistakable trace of boyish pride. “The new version is the same film superficially, of course, but it’s also very different: a different atmosphere, different performances, a different end result. That in and of itself is interesting.”

Interesting and potentially nightmarish. Having Haneke at the helm seems to have led, perhaps inevitably, to conflict with Warner Independent, the studio that is distributing “Funny Games”: the film’s release date was repeatedly delayed, possibly a result of disagreement over whether the film should be positioned for the horror market or for a wider audience. “He had panic attacks about how the film was going to be received and problems with the crew, and language problems,” said Brady Corbet, who plays Peter, one of the two wisecracking, self-reflective killers in the remake. “It was a nightmare for him, and I doubt he’ll ever try to work here again.”

When I asked Haneke if he would return to work in the U.S., he took an uncharacteristically long time to reply. “I enjoyed many things about the shoot,” he said, clearly choosing his words with great care. “I enjoyed working with the actors especially. The actors were wonderful.”

Haneke has always had a gift for eliciting extraordinary performances from his actors, an absolute necessity in films that otherwise refuse to cater to the audience. “The Piano Teacher” seems to have been unthinkable for him without Isabelle Huppert; “Code Unknown” was written specifically for Juliette Binoche; and without Naomi Watts, it seems very likely that “Funny Games” would never have been remade. Watching both versions of “Funny Games” back to back is especially revealing of Haneke’s skill. Though the dialogue, framing and sequence of shots are identical, the end result is remarkably different: Michael Pitt, the other of the family’s tormentors, brings a disconcerting sweetness to his role; Tim Roth emotes where Ulrich Mahe endured stoically; and Watts herself infuses her character’s suffering with a sexuality that Susanne Lothar, perhaps intentionally, kept at a definite remove.

“What makes Michael different from other directors,” Corbet told me, “is his absolute specificity — there’s one way to make this movie, period. He’s a total dictator. Before this shoot started, I spoke to a number of actors who’d worked with him, and all of them told me the same thing: ‘Brace yourself.’ ”

There’s an element of paradox in the task Haneke has set himself: in order to make films that confront the use of violence as titillation, it’s necessary to make violent films and even, to some extent, titillating ones. In the course of each of his productions, Haneke has had to navigate these ethically and conceptually fraught waters anew, with varying degrees of success. His films have by no means earned him unanimous praise: moviegoers and critics alike have often resented the missionary quality in his work, and accusations of self-righteousness have dogged him throughout his career. Reviewing the original version of “Funny Games,” the critic J. Hoberman wrote: “His movies are founded on the denial of catharsis and, to compound the creepiness, Haneke insists he is occupying the moral high ground. . . . The wheel is rigged so only Haneke can win.” One of the great paradoxes of Haneke’s position is that the methods he despises are the only methods at his disposal, and the criticisms his own films garner are often not so very different — on the surface, at least — from comments he himself has made about films that he hates.

His most widely seen film in the U.S., “Caché,” released in 2005, won Haneke his second major prize at Cannes and is perhaps the director’s most delicate balancing act. By turns both Hitchcockian thriller and cool morality play, “Caché” follows a Parisian haute-bourgeois family as it unravels in the face of a harassment campaign that is chilling in its simplicity: each morning a videocassette containing footage of the family’s house is mysteriously dropped off on its doorstep, showing the comings and goings of each family member but giving no clue as to the maker of the tape. No overt threats are made, and no explanations given, but the family — Daniel Auteuil, Lester Makedonsky and Juliette Binoche, in her second starring role for Haneke — do the rest of the harasser’s work for him. By the end of the film, a devastating secret has come to light, a man has been killed and the family is damaged beyond repair.

“Caché” is simultaneously the most conventional and the most opaque of Haneke’s films, and arguably the most effective. While one of the central mysteries of the film — the question of who is making the tapes — is never resolved, why the tapes are being made soon becomes clear. The father of the family, to all appearances a model left-leaning intellectual, is a man with a crime in his past: as a boy, during the time of the Algerian conflict, he betrayed a young Algerian ward of his family, resulting in the ward’s abandonment and eventual suicide. Though Haneke resists being represented as a political filmmaker, it’s hard to avoid seeing a message here: namely, that the comforts of the bourgeoisie have been paid for in blood, and in the case of France, that blood was largely North African. In our talks, Haneke repeatedly criticized films that summarize or explain themselves to the viewer — that do the audience’s work for it, in other words — but “Caché” comes dangerously close to doing just that. Yet, just as “Caché” seems about to supply the viewer with any number of conventionally satisfying solutions, it slyly — some would say maddeningly — refuses to choose between them, closing with an intriguing final shot that may or may not hold the answer. The fact that the film ultimately succeeds is no small tribute to the director’s considerable talent as a juggler of audience expectations.

Largely because of its preoccupation with violence as entertainment, “Funny Games” has been compared with Stanley Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange.” Haneke himself, however, views “A Clockwork Orange” as a noble failure. “I’m a huge Kubrick fan, but I find ‘A Clockwork Orange’ a kind of miscalculation, because he makes the brutality so spectacular — so stylized, with dance numbers and so on — that you almost have to admire it,” he told me. “I read somewhere — I’m not sure if it’s true — that Kubrick was completely shocked when he saw how the public reacted to ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ and that he even tried to have the film recalled. It became a cult hit because people found its hyperstylized violence somehow cool, and that was certainly not what Kubrick had intended.” Haneke shook his head slowly. “It’s incredibly difficult to present violence on-screen in a responsible manner. I would never claim to be cleverer than Kubrick, but I have the advantage of making my films after he made his. I’ve been able to learn a tremendous amount from his mistakes.” Whether one of those mistakes was to make a film that actually had popular appeal was a question that Haneke left unanswered.

Haneke’s sudden prominence, and the unfailingly extreme subject matter of his films, has led to comparisons with Quentin Tarantino, with John Woo and with the directors of the so-called Asian Extreme movement, but Haneke himself sees little common ground. “I saw ‘Pulp Fiction,’ of course, and it’s a very well done film,” he said. “The problem, as I see it, is with its comedy — there’s a danger there, because the humor makes the violence consumable. Humor of that kind is all right, even useful, as long as the viewer is made to think about why he’s laughing. But that’s something ‘Pulp Fiction’ fails to do.” When I mentioned Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” another film that “Funny Games” has been compared with, Haneke shrugged. “Stone made the same mistake that Kubrick made. I use that film to illustrate a principle to my students — you can’t make an antifascist statement using fascist methods.”

Haneke has his own theory for the divergent routes taken by Hollywood and Europe, one in which, perhaps not surprisingly, the darker side of German and Austrian history plays a central role. “At the beginning of the 20th century,” he told me, “when film began in Europe, storytelling of the kind still popular in Hollywood was every bit as popular here. Then the Nazis came, and the intellectuals — a great number of whom were Jewish — were either murdered or managed to escape to America and elsewhere. There were no intellectuals anymore — most of them were dead. Those who escaped to America were able to continue the storytelling approach to film — really a 19th-century tradition — with a clear conscience, since it hadn’t been tainted by fascism. But in the German-speaking world, and in most of the rest of Europe, that type of straightforward storytelling, which the Nazis had made such good use of, came to be viewed with distrust. The danger hidden in storytelling became clear — how easy it was to manipulate the crowd. As a result, film, and especially literature, began to examine itself. Storytelling, with all the tricks and ruses it requires, became gradually suspect. This was not the case in Hollywood.” At this point, Haneke asked politely whether I was following him, and I told him that I was. “I’m glad,” he said, apparently with genuine relief. “For Americans, this can sometimes be hard to accept.”

Over the last decade, a new group of Francophone filmmakers has come to prominence in Europe, one less bedazzled by the Hollywood genre films that so influenced the New Wave directors than by the work of French auteurs like Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson. The Belgian-born Dardenne brothers, for example, favor dark, naturalistic studies of working-class life, while Bruno Dumont, a former professor of philosophy, makes violent and sexually explicit films that tend toward parable. But both share a preference for long, intricately composed shots, a resolutely anti-Hollywood aesthetic and a Bressonian aversion for spelling things out. Haneke feels at home in their company: “I wait for each new film by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Abbas Kiarostami, Claire Denis and Bruno Dumont. I enjoy all sorts of films, but those are the people that really interest me. I admire the Dardenne brothers tremendously, but I feel closest, in my work, to Dumont. Dumont’s films are basically existential works, philosophical films, not political ones. I think of my own films that way.” There are other notable similarities between Haneke and Dumont: both directors make violent films that focus on the consequences of the act of violence, rather than on the act itself; both have won the coveted grand jury prize at Cannes; and both were booed there when their awards were announced. When I mentioned this to Haneke, he grinned. “Some of my fondest professional memories are of upsetting the audience at Cannes.”

“I had a dream last night,” Haneke told me toward the end of our lunch in New York. “A nightmare, to be exact. Maybe you’ll find it useful for your piece.” For a moment he was uncharacteristically quiet. He finally said: “I was sitting in a bus, and suddenly it went out of control. For some reason I was responsible for everybody’s safety, but I couldn’t get the steering wheel to work: perhaps it was broken, perhaps someone else was preventing me. People were wandering up and down the street, and the bus ran them over, unavoidably, one after another. Somehow I was responsible for this, but I was helpless to prevent it.” He took a slow, thoughtful sip of his coffee. “A pretty terrible dream, but to me it seems representative of our current situation in the world. All of us are responsible but unable to change the direction of the bus — everyone in Europe, everyone in the so-called first world, is in that same position. A horrible predicament, almost unbearable if you think about it, but the bus keeps right on rolling.” He laughed again. “Maybe I’ll use that in one of my films.”

John Wray is the author of the novels “Canaan’s Tongue” and “The Right Hand of Sleep.” He last wrote for the magazine on heavy-metal bands.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

so you disagree that manipulative, unreflexive narratives that efface their own political assumptions are less popular in europe than in america, and that the split started happening some time in the 1930s? the quote makes him sound like he's saying this was some deliberate, retrospective move on the part of european directors - which i wd have to disagree with, if that's what he is saying - since it had already begun with brecht

Yes, that Nazi stuff is total bollocks

Even he says that all films are "manipulative," as I've said to every Spielberg hater on ILX.

It figures that he likes Dumont, whose films are just as soulless as Cache, but dumber. (I do still like Time of the Wolf and Code Unknown)

Dumont's films are, surely, mostly about soullessness (sp?) so i don't think any admirer of dumont would take that as a criticism. i don't think Caché is soulless but its coldness is one of the things that's so affecting about it.

He is going to teach us all a very important lesson about violence in the media.

I've seem Haneke's last five films at the cinema and all three of the Saw movies; I'm sure I'm not alone in this

no, but if I had a nickel for every one of you, I'm still taking the subway.

“We have a saying in Austria,” he said, his smile not entirely hidden behind his snowy beard. “The sewage is up to our necks already — whatever you do, don’t make waves.”

--

catchy!

"...as Austrian as Austrian can be."

What the hell does this mean?

"Michael Pitt, the other of the family’s tormentors, brings a disconcerting sweetness to his role; Tim Roth emotes where Ulrich Mahe endured stoically; and Watts herself infuses her character’s suffering with a sexuality that Susanne Lothar, perhaps intentionally, kept at a definite remove"

Oh, ok, it means that John Wray is a monolingual moron who only knows what he reads in the subtitles. Just the guy to write a puff piece on Haneke, then.

I might respect Haneke more if he directed straight schlock like "Disturbia" or "Hostel."

but if he didn't hate fun we wouldn't know he wasn't trash

apparently Jay-Z is already obsessed with this, so dud

Why are you allowing Jay-Z to dictate your tastes?

quitit is funnier than an scrotal hematoma.

anyone seen Lemmings? (Haneke, not National Lampoon's)

i was zinging el morbio

xpost

Oh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec-70W_K77U

TRAILER

""funny games",now in english. why?!?!"

Why not?

I've actually not seen 'funny games', but have obv read about it. Love 'The piano teacher' and 'Hidden'. Anyone from here going to see this at the London film fest.

When does this get a wider release?

http://www.institut-francais.org.uk/content/blogcategory/14/92/

Preview on the 29th, so it will be here soon - just as gd is a season of Haneke's films throughout March. Only seen four of his films, none of them from before the mid-90s.

Brooklynite actor Michael Pitt has come a long way from starring on Dawson’s Creek, and in the current issue of Giant magazine he delivers, in context, some particularly vapid-funny-traditionally-hipster quotes about the Saw franchise, U.S. soldiers and people who won’t/don’t “get” the March remake of Funny Games.

On his film preferences…

“I don’t even know what Saw or Hostel are. Are they like Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I guess I’m drawn to things like Lawrence of Arabia.”

And then he adds…

“[Audiences that don’t like Funny Games] can kiss my ass. I hope they do [get angry with] Funny Games. It challenges you. If you’re not up to the challenge, go see Saw.”

And not to get Fox News-y, but coming from Pitt, “one of the faces of Emporio Armani and a friend of author J.T. Leroy,” this quote equating being a soldier to regression is ridiculous…

“People think that, until you’ve killed someone or had someone shoot at you, you’re not a grown-up. Going to war isn’t growing up; it’s moving backwards.”

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/02/16/michael-pitt-disses-saw-fans-soldiers-funny-games-detractors/

I made the Saw comparison earlier because the preview has such a "let the games begin...enjoy the ride" style similar to Saw (and very similar to A Clockwork Orange as well, I guess. But the whole irony of violence and torture being a game, plus the shots of Naomi Watts resembling the Capticity posters from last summer, are, as I said earlier, part of what put the new version in a different context from the original.

I forgot a close-parenthesis, and it's Capitivity.

i don't want to see this, 'saw', or the original 'funny games'. some people need really elaborate ways to watch scenes of torture, some people less elaborate.

The meta makes me curious, but I'm just a blowhard, what do I know.

i don't want to see this, 'saw', or the original 'funny games'. some people need really elaborate ways to watch scenes of torture, some people less elaborate.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, February 17, 2008 12:23 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

This is so, so, so correct. Even the preview pissed me off, actually.

nrq OTM, fuck this whole genre

As I understand it (haven't seen), most of the pain in this occurs off screen?

think u can hear it.

think the clever idea is OH FUCK IT I DON'T CARE.

I watched and loved four of Haneke's French films before sitting down to watch Funny Games so expectations were pretty high. I watched a third of it, or maybe half of it, before switching it off. It wasn't that I disagreed with anything about it . . . It's just that I found it boring, leaden, overwrought, etc.

somebody should make a satire of movie violence in which all the characters are really nice to each other

somebody should get these motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking plane... but make it a sly commentary on our attitudes towards violence toward animals.

somebody should make a satire of movie violence in which all the characters are really nice to each other

-- Noodle Vague, Sunday, February 17, 2008 9:33 PM

I kinda felt like all the Rodney Dangerfield flashbacks in Natural Born Killers were severely wrongheaded and backwards attempt at this.

that whole film was severely wrongheaded and backwards.

otm i hate that movie

I felt that way when I saw "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" preview. Some serious misogyny going on there.

"As I understand it (haven't seen), most of the pain in this occurs off screen?"

Just like in 'Rome, Open City'.

And like Fields of Salmon, I just really love what I've seen from him so far. Usually, whenever I hear of a 'sick' movie its kinda yawnsome, but I gotta see it. I sat through 'There Will be Blood' today, need to recover.

feelin yr pain

"I guess I'm drawn to things like Lawrence Of Arabia" is gonna be my new conversation killer.

This has nothing to do, genrewise, with Saw... which is why even my Haneke-lovin' friend predicts this will bomb spectacularly in the US.

Michael Pitt looks so annoyingly pretty in his white outfit in the trailer that I could get into using him in assorted evil Hanekian ways.

The hate this movie will generate is the kind that will persist for decades. It's a hate that will bind married couples together and cause couples who see it on their first date to break up for good. I'm talking hate that will define a generation.

http://mgoer.blogspot.com/2008/03/movie-youll-love-to-hate.html

I have to admit, it's tempting to see it at a multiplex this Friday night just to transcribe the outrage of Normal American Moviegoers who aren't prepared for meta.

I dunno if people are going to be outraged, but they probably will hate it. That essay sold me on seeing the movie better than anything else has.

I would unreservedly love this movie if it weren't for the massively irritating rewind scene. That was too far IMO and made the entire film meaningless to me.

morbius,

that is the most condescending shit you have ever posted.

seriously,

get a grip. stop assuming yourself such a high-minded cultural critic. it is impossible to watch 'funny games' and be un-"prepared for the meta." it is, however, quite probable that the 'normal american moviegoer' will be a little less deluded by the remake's filmic worth, or whatever you want to call it, than the middlebrow film-consumptive position that posits sadism reflected back on the viewer is somehow a great and useful tool to -- what? who even cares?

a horrifying oh-so-clever movie about domestic terror with uniformly mean-spirited and sadistic politics (of viewership! implicating the audience!) is in no way difficult to comprehend. i am pretty sure everybody who sees this movie will "get" it.

honestly, i like you, and i really like reading what you write. but sometimes the 'i see things that others are too stupid to see' line wears a little thin and jackassish, and it undermines other, more valid things you say.

by the way, that sounded way meaner than i intended it.

i am just venting, and it wasn't entirely at you.

i am pretty sure everybody who sees this movie will "get" it.

C'mon remy, you know there are tens of thousands of moronic teenagers who will not remotely "get" this (or rather, what Haneke hopes they will get), for starters.

Saw "Benny's Video" and "71 Fragments..", the former had a couple of ill-judged scenes, the latter ws perfect - cinema that drains you (and its a good quality, in my book).

I'll probably be hugely disappointed by 'Funny Games' now.

I've seen this movie, it's called Scream.

a little but no, not really.

C'mon remy, you know there are tens of thousands of moronic teenagers who will not remotely "get" this (or rather, what Haneke hopes they will get), for starters.

-- Dr Morbius, Tuesday, March 11, 2008 8:00 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

meaning?

tens of thousands of moronic teenagers queuing up for... funny games, dir. michael haneke.

'i see things that others are too stupid to see'

I want to write the movie that has this as the poster tagline.

tens of thousands of moronic teenagers lining up for a Naomi Watts movie, yes.

How many people went to see 'Eastern Promises' in the US? How many were teens?

(I am delighted Watts is in 'Funny Games')

EP grossed $17 M in the US. But that really hasn't much to do with anything.

Once again, film threads suck.

There are other things to read in the world if you like.

i saw the original funny games when i was a teenager. i hated it, but i "got" what he was trying to do. i don't think it's a terribly lofty or high-minded (validity is another issue) point haneke's making and the intruders sort of take pains to point out to the audience what they're doing. furthermore if you think the movie/director are so odious, why does it matter to you in the first place?

Hostel: Part II did a pretty good job of acknowledging that part of the audience wants the experience of the intelligent sadist as much as it wants the experience of the victim.

gotta feel superior to somebody! xp

It doesn't really matter to me.

mark, eat shit.

Morbs, Haneke is not the director I would erect as an avatar of subtlety.

Is Haneke any good? I keep hearing how his films are full of squishy violence, but this is to make the audience question their complicity in such acts. As I shun his films, I am not complicit. Go me!

Caché ("Hidden") is brilliant and has none of this audience faff going on. I'm of two minds about seeing Funny Games, because it sounds dangerously close to "Irreversible" which I thought was ugly and pointless and got off on its own perversity even as it was chastizing the audience for doing the same thing.

Haneke is not the director I would erect as an avatar of subtlety.

Me neither. Subtlety is not required to confuse the average American plexgoer.

The thing I hate about this movie is that it does a fantastic job of being completely horrifying and unsettling right up until the rewind scene, which is so completely out of the blue and over the fourth wall line compared to all of the other instances of breaking the fourth wall that it completely ruined the mood of the movie and everything about it ceased to matter; it stopped being a commentary or indictment on anything and became about how clever and above everything the movie was.

I keep hearing how his films are full of squishy violence, but this is to make the audience question their complicity in such acts. As I shun his films, I am not complicit. Go me!

Me too. I hate that kind of thing so even if it is supposed to be an indictment of said violence I wouldn't want to watch it.

Caché ("Hidden") is brilliant and has none of this audience faff going on

it's not meta but it seemed to me that it was trying to indict the audience as complicit in racism/classism instead of violence

I definitely felt (annoyed by) that typical Haneke finger-wagging condescending tone

OK I can see that but I'm sympathetic to the idea that intellectual moviegoers are actually complicit in racism and classism (as opposed to, like, rape) and they may as well see a clever, surprising movie about that.

Blog comment from Hollywood Elsewhere, confirming expecs:

I saw the preview this weekend at a suburban theatre. Total silence until the end when someone said FUCK YOU to the screen. The audience applauded.

doesn't that count as resounding success in your book??

ha!

well that sounds like a reasonable reaction to a really provocative film... if you wanna read "stupid americans" into that sure go ahead. xp

i mean are intelligent audiences supposed to politely and unquestioningly go along with wherever the director is leading them? and if they don't they're braindead american teenagers?

I read that as "branded American teenagers," which I thinks works better.

As much as I think Haneke is an ass, I suspect this FG, like the original, is way better than a dumbass amoral beefcake beatdown like Never Back Down, which will entrance a lot more teenagers for at least one weekend.

I suspect they're about the same in terms of worth and overal self-satisfied smugness.

Never Back Down amoral? That moral code is in the title!

I was thinking last night about films that have taken the Funny Games approach in aiming to confront an audience's reaction to sex. Working Girls (day-in-the-life of a call girl) covered this pretty well), and the screen-test scene in Mulholland Drive did as well.

Won't Never Back Down gross more due to a wider release? Or is Funny Games US opening all over the place?

I mean, you could've put that kind of marketing "muscle" (har har but seriously there are a lot of commercials) behind this movie and i'm sure you'd get a similar turnout, at least until everybody's at their schools going "DON'T SEE IT IT IS SO GAY"

yes, NBD is wide (and contradicts then confirms the title in ultracynical ways). FG is Warner Independent, so I'm guessing a couple hundred theaters -- but I think I read they've expanded the number due to 'buzz' among the 'kids.'

NBD is not even good gay fight porn.

wow I don't even know what Never Back Down is. yay not having cable.

I feel like the "YOU ARE COMPLICIT IN VIOLENCE YOU ENJOY IT THAT IS WHY YOU ARE WATCHING THIS MOVIE" thing has been done to death, and I would yell "FUCK YOU" at a Funny Games trailer in response to the condescending retreading of old bullshit. I'm totally with Tracer on wanting to see a movie condemning complacency toward classism/racism(/sexism) though.

woah wait there is buzz among the kids about FG? must be all the trailers on BarCast.

Actually the only reason I'd go see this would be to contrast Naomi Watts with Susanne Lothar.

jessie then you should see Caché! Although actually I was identifying way more with the Algerian dude than with Daniel Auteil's cold, formal family. (Probably no accident; the first shot of the movie is a long, long take of the outside of Auteil's house, shot on video by a stalker -- definitely NOT Auteil's POV)

can someone explain to me what kind of moviegoer will enjoy this film? ie. if some person sees it and is like "best film ever" what are 2, 3, 4, 5? will it be like, fight club, memento, the matrix, se7en? or a different kind of person?

can someone explain something to me--if the point of the movie is to implicate the audience in its violent sadism, why on earth isnt hating it a perfectly legitimate response? i mean, if the movie is going to say "fuck you" to me, why can't i say "fuck you" right back?

It's legitimate, it's just not likely what Warners wants to see on preview cards.

I have at various times sung kudos to all four of those movies, Will, and I think this movie can eat shit.

can someone explain to me what kind of moviegoer will enjoy this film? ie. if some person sees it and is like "best film ever" what are 2, 3, 4, 5? will it be like, fight club, memento, the matrix, se7en? or a different kind of person?

dogville?

Someone with an older brother who's obsessed with Requiem for a Dream and Fight Club.

I have at various times sung kudos to all four of those movies, Will, and I think this movie can eat shit.

No no no, I'm not saying that people who like THOSE will like THIS, I'm asking if it's the other way around... kind of a weird question, i concede.

Let's ask Morbius, assuming he likes the movie!

I don't like Anthony Lane much, but his review is pretty thorough and insightful.

I don't particularly like the Euro version of FG but it's better than Irreversible, at least.

None of those movies you listed, Will, are relatable, bcz they are all showbizzy entertainments next t oHaneke's m.o. -- even Fight Club is a perverse romantic comedy version of the book. I think Tracer Hand could best answer!

i think I will like this movie better because it's American, not German.

But Irreversible is better than both because it's French.

I "got" what the original FG was trying to do and deeply resented that my hating it validated its claims. It is movie-as-date-rapist personified.

The US version would interest me if Tim Roth turned the tables and gave Michael Pitt a slow 20-minute hatefuck.

I won't link Armond.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8e/Ds27.jpg/200px-Ds27.jpg

Asshole Admits To Being Asshole In Supreme Asshole Move

Blog comment from Hollywood Elsewhere, confirming expecs:
I saw the preview this weekend at a suburban theatre. Total silence until the end when someone said FUCK YOU to the screen. The audience applauded.

I don't think even Haneke would expect anyone to react to FG any differently.

yeah unless he wanted the guy to yell out "WE ARE ALL GUILTY!" or something

the villain of this film...is US

haha my wife booed at this preview

"I AM TOTALLY IN FAVOR OF RAPE AND VIOLENCE!"

Hoberman: "the American audience whom Haneke seeks to address is less apt to see Funny Games as a critique of dominant cinema than an argument for personal handguns."

"i think I will like this movie better because it's American, not German."

The only redeeming quality of the original movie was that it was Austrian, the killers and the scenery Austrian, the tourist victims all rich Germans -- which made it a sort of "LOCALS ONLY, HA HA HA" joke. When you remove that, well Nubbelverbrennung OTM.

Oops. It's been awhile. That's like thinking Fargo was about Iowans, huh.

"Is Haneke any good? I keep hearing how his films are full of squishy violence, but this is to make the audience question their complicity in such acts. As I shun his films, I am not complicit. Go me!"

I've seen seven of his, and there are only, at most, one or two scenes of any actual violence -- its just that he does it give it more thought (or less, depending on whether you like his films) as to when the scene comes in. The suicide scene in 'Hidden' could be a follow-up
on the killing of Delphine Seyrig's client in Akermann's 'Jeanne Dielman', for example -- its just carefully positioned, with seemingly little explanation (but the little there is what keeps you going when you leave the theatre) that is actually very effective, and maybe too effective...anyway, you can see his films as part-thrillers, but there is lots of character, and other preoccupations that come in -- e.g. immigration.

Hoberman: "the American audience whom Haneke seeks to address is less apt to see Funny Games as a critique of dominant cinema than an argument for personal handguns."

Totally OTM. To me Haneke has always seemed like Bill Kristol and Bill Bennett's favorite director.

nice with the Jeanne Dielman spoiler, xyzzzz__, you just saved a buncha ppl 4 hours.

Another smartreview in the Chicago Reader (not by Rosenbaum, who retired two weeks ago).

Warner Independent Pictures must not share Haneke’s high-minded morality, because its Web site for Funny Games is a typical scary movie come-on that invites visitors to “play the game” by personalizing and sending to friends a video clip of someone tied in a laundry bag and being bludgeoned with a golf club.

I’m trying to rape the viewer into independence

say what you want about american audiences, but I think they will pick up on this vibe, even subliminally, and resent the "I'm messing with your emotions for your own good" attitude. haneke's indictment would be a lot more effective if he just played it straight, which I think is tied to dan's wishing haneke would skip the be-kind-rewind foolishness and just get vicious with it.

“It was funny — funny for me, at least — how the theater reacted to Anna’s shooting of Dickie,” Haneke told me, referring to a scene late in the film when the heroine turns the tables on her captors. “There was actual applause at first — then, when the scene is rewound, making the audience conscious of what it’s cheering for, the theater went absolutely silent. There was a general realization, even though the victim in this case was a villain in the film, that they’d been applauding an act of murder.” Haneke frowned slightly at the memory, but the frown appeared to be one of satisfaction. “I’m hoping for something similar when ‘Funny Games’ shows here.”

yeah dude that's not gonna happen.

we totally applaud murder over here

The way to subvert this genre (or the Fatal Attraction-type genre, which is built on showing a white-collar family justifiably commiting murder) is to show the consequences of these actions. To show remorseless and unstoppable genius killer-philosophers (see this, No Country for Old Men, etc.) is to show an embodiment of evil, but it's not at all the way to inspire empathy in viewers. As I said way way earlier, Funny Games in 1997 was in the context of O.J. Simpson, Man Bites Dog, Natural Born Killers, et. al. -- a peacetime story of "amusing outselves to death" -- while the new Funny Games comes after Abu Gharib.

we totally applaud murder over here

in movie theaters, hell yeah

and in gas chambers, electric chairs, etc.

have any crits brought up straw dogs in comparison? that's usually the go-to film for confused critiques of violent cinema.

I didn't like some of its pulpy narrative turns, but mystic river is a more satisfying critique of violence than funny games.

xp: Thanks for asking! Now I can link Armond.

http://nypress.com/21/11/film/ArmondWhite.cfm

Although derived from the siege situations memorably played out in The Desperate Hours, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, or John Brahms’ agreeably hokey 1967 feature Hot Rods to Hell, Haneke’s film refuses the cathartic release of those earlier movies. The particular greatness of Straw Dogs was in Peckinpah exercising recognizable social tensions surrounding sex, imperialism and machismo. Straw Dogs triggered the American appetite for justice or kick-ass resolution and then—masterfully—scrutinized it. Only people without Peckinpah memories will buy Haneke’s specious claim to modern sophistication.

mystic river shows just as much contempt for the audience's revenge fantasies by refusing to give us the money shot (at least not the one we want), but it isn't so goddamn high and mighty about it. there's something really middlebrow about funny games.

I can't completely discount haneke tho cause I've only seen fg and time of the wolf.

"european cinema violence is so much deeper"

haneke's indictment would be a lot more effective if he just played it straight, which I think is tied to dan's wishing haneke would skip the be-kind-rewind foolishness and just get vicious with it.

COMPLETELY FUCKING OTM

If you're going to manipulate the audience, don't be so fucking clumsy about it.

Even J.R. Jones gets a funny in edgewise:

"One nice thing about America is that you can’t be tried twice for the same crime."

heh, I wouldn't have noticed this:

Ed Gonzalez at Slant wittily acknowledged the new picture’s uselessness by reprinting his original Funny Games write-up with only the actors’ names changed

"european cinema violence is so much deeper"

I don't need some fucking Eurotrash filmaker coming here to lecture me on how violent American society is. This film seems totally useless.

people still say "eurotrash"?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808279/board

funny game is a movie

ITS PLAYING RIGHT NEAR ME!

The original was upsetting enough. I'll never see this.

reading j hoberman's review -- is he saying haneke uses trickery to make us think the two intruders torture the family, so that the audience's tewwible bloodlust is actually an overreaction? or is it just that we're meant to deplore the revenge impulse as such? i don't want to see this, anyway.

“At the beginning of the 20th century,” he told me, “when film began in Europe, storytelling of the kind still popular in Hollywood was every bit as popular here. Then the Nazis came, and the intellectuals — a great number of whom were Jewish — were either murdered or managed to escape to America and elsewhere. There were no intellectuals anymore — most of them were dead. Those who escaped to America were able to continue the storytelling approach to film — really a 19th-century tradition — with a clear conscience, since it hadn’t been tainted by fascism. But in the German-speaking world, and in most of the rest of Europe, that type of straightforward storytelling, which the Nazis had made such good use of, came to be viewed with distrust. The danger hidden in storytelling became clear — how easy it was to manipulate the crowd. As a result, film, and especially literature, began to examine itself. Storytelling, with all the tricks and ruses it requires, became gradually suspect. This was not the case in Hollywood.” At this point, Haneke asked politely whether I was following him, and I told him that I was. “I’m glad,” he said, apparently with genuine relief. “For Americans, this can sometimes be hard to accept.”

^^^ stupid bullshit. ok that's kind of an anglo perspective -- we're european too. but the notion that storytelling is "tricks and ruses" -- like, as against what? -- is foolish. especially when you're throwing grand narratives like this around!

As I said way way earlier, Funny Games in 1997 was in the context of O.J. Simpson, Man Bites Dog, Natural Born Killers, et. al. -- a peacetime story of "amusing outselves to death" -- while the new Funny Games comes after Abu Gharib.

-- Eazy, Thursday, March 13, 2008 6:52 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

in europe, not very far from austria, there was this big ol' war in the mid-90s... i don't think the context has changed much.

“It was funny — funny for me, at least — how the theater reacted to Anna’s shooting of Dickie,” Haneke told me, referring to a scene late in the film when the heroine turns the tables on her captors. “There was actual applause at first — then, when the scene is rewound, making the audience conscious of what it’s cheering for, the theater went absolutely silent. There was a general realization, even though the victim in this case was a villain in the film, that they’d been applauding an act of murder.” Haneke frowned slightly at the memory, but the frown appeared to be one of satisfaction. “I’m hoping for something similar when ‘Funny Games’ shows here.”

The audience was cheering because the victim had successfully defended herself from the psychopaths, and they went quiet during the rewind scene because they were wondering WHAT THE FUCK YOU WERE TRYING TO PULL WITH THAT BULLSHIT STUNT

o.t.m.

Good point about Bosnia, TOGTHIQI.

Jim Emerson's blog entry about the movie and its reception is more thorough and interesting than his review.

ohhh godddd i went to see this with friends today not knowing anything about it or haneke and left before it ended. what an annoying movie. right up there with dogville. naomi watts prolly fielding career advice from nicole kidman for this one. blech.

somebody should make a satire of movie violence in which all the characters are really nice to each other

-- Noodle Vague, Sunday, February 17, 2008 9:33 PM (1 month ago

hilarious

Marge: I hope you realize now that violence on TV may be funny, but it's
not so funny when that violence is happening to you.
Bart: (smug) But it _would_ be funny to someone who was watching us.
Marge: Hmm...
Lisa: No, Mom, he's right. [takes off shoe] Observe:
(throws it at Bart)
(Marge laughs involuntarily; Lisa and Bart laugh too)
Marge: Oh, my! Lisa, go to your room.
Lisa: Aw...

lol hoberman

Professional obligations required that I endure it, but there's no reason why you should.

Michael Haneke's remake of his own Funny Games (Warner Independent) did very little business, grabbing just $1,800 per screen at 289 engagements...

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/03/17/indie-weekend-box-office-contempt-reissue-far-outpaces-new-re/

ooh look, a new print of contempt!

funny games sonned in contempt beef, lawlz

I think I like the original FG slightly more than Contempt (marital arguing on the Rivieria, blahblahblah)

"naomi watts prolly fielding career advice from nicole kidman for this one."

Watts did 'broke' w/"Mulholland Drive", right? She's also done "21 Grams" (which ws no good, but..), she's also been in a remake of another foreign film so I doubt you could compare it w/Kidman...

Funny Games sonned by Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.

Miss Pettigrew = $3,617/screen.

I wonder what Michael H.'s theory about this is.

You know, another possibility is that some Warners exec asked offered him a million dollars and his kid needed some braces, and all of the theories and justifications and PR spin followed the deal

that "storytelling = fascism" narrative is some unbelievably lameass rationalizing. but what do I know I am a stupid american.

In that long profile up above, Haneke says that the problem with Pulp Fiction is that it's a comedy. The thing about Funny Games, though, is that it features characters who are playful about violence and who treat it as a game, which is the dramatic conceit as Natural Born Killers, Smokin' Aces, A Clockwork Orange, and even No Country for Old Men.

Watts did 'broke' w/"Mulholland Drive", right? She's also done "21 Grams" (which ws no good, but..), she's also been in a remake of another foreign film so I doubt you could compare it w/Kidman...

oh i was just being snide. it reminded me the last time i was this annoyed by a film it was dogville. and watts and kidman are best friends or something.

Caché ("Hidden") is brilliant and has none of this audience faff going on

it's not meta but it seemed to me that it was trying to indict the audience as complicit in racism/classism instead of violence

[...]

-- dmr, Wednesday, 12 March 2008 13:40 (6 days ago) Link

this is certainly what he's trying to do but i don't understand who he expects to identify with his protagonists. maybe in code inconnu, i could identify with a lot of them, but in cache?

the only affinity i feel with a cache character is through the fear expressed by the french family, but that doesn't connect me with them. i guess it's cause i'm not french?

I see plenty of "audience faff" in Caché, it's just not made explicit.

elan i guess i don't really see the family as the protagonists, i see whoever's making the tapes as the protagonist

and you identify with them? that's crazy like krazie bone.

I don't feel like going to movies to be "indicted" in anything.

have you seen 'pretty woman', bill?

POW!

"have you seen 'pretty woman', bill?"

Clever!

You might wanna stay away from Errol Morris's film on Abu Ghraib, in that case

enrique it's not that crazy! like i said upthread, the first five minutes of the movie, your POV is literally his POV

but it's kind of like saying you identify with this guy

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/people/shows/blake/interactive/gallery/07.lost.highway.jpg

it's the POV of an unattended camera... even then we shouldn't conflate literal POV with the other thing. and the tapes are meant for the binoche family. they are meant to be looking at themselves, i suppose.

in retrospect, and i do like some haneke, the film was pretty o_O -- what the fuck @ the scene where the algerian guy kills himself because auteuil confronts him?

though auteuil's character is a bit of a dick, i'm not sure what heneke thinks the right response is to being stalked -- unless he thinks the stalkee deserves it because of something he did as a child. would not want to be one of haneke's kids.

way to spoil, dude!

i think haneke imagines that if you're being stalked because you ruined someone's life, you might want to actually try engaging with them as a human being instead of browbeating them even further

he was a kid though... the absurdity of it is partly that autueil is meant to take the blame for his parents' generation's sins.

not sure what response the stalker expected?

iirc DA lies to his parents about the kid they've adopted; the problem for the film is that this is clearly meant to indict him for racism. and it's possible he was a racist kid, but kids get crazily jealous of their parents' attention -- form of sibling rivalry?

it's hard to make it stand for the sins of the colonists anyway, which i think is probably haneke's main point.

i think caché works, and is chilling, without any of the allegory at all

that said it's pretty clear to me that

parents = the state
sibling rivalry = "those algerians get away with everything"
childhood lies = racism

i also don't think haneke is excusing the bizarre stalking behavior at all, either allegorically or diegetically, he's simply explaining it. you don't have to excuse terrorism to understand why it happens.

by "parents" i mean auteil's parents, although just like actual families, nations pass on their sins to the next generation, which i think was one of the big points the movie was making

the final scene that seems to irritate people so much is deliberately leaving open the question of whether this is going to happen yet again

So I saw Funny Games (super american version) last night.

I liked Caché, which is the only other Haneke film I've seen. Funny Games was... well, it was everything that's been said so far on this thread. I saw it in the theater because, frankly, I had a mediocre weekend and wanted something I could go to that would distract me. Because that's what a lot of modern shock horror does, it pretty much acts as a chalkboard eraser.

As background, let me say that I really don't like modern shock horror, or "torture porn," or whatever you want to call it. So I figured this film would split the difference -- I could be annoyed at Haneke's leering at the audience, and get some distracting shocking violence. Haneke, however, basically makes this movie a moralizing two-hour cocktease.

There's absolutely no dramatic build-up past the beginning when the two kids make it into the house, as at no point did I think that anyone was going to make it away. All the violence is off-screen, and I couldn't be bothered to imagine what's happening. There's not really any risk during the film -- who cares if they die fast or slow, or if they try to escape, because it's all going to end. I almost left a couple times because the film basically says "hey, no one's going to make it out, you can leave!" but it REALLY MEANS IT. There's absolutely no reason to stick around, no "payoff" except for this smug idea that things are just going to keep rolling on -- no climax, no catharsis, nada.

but the parents have adopted a kid whose parents were killed by the state (isn't that right?). if there's a villain in the film, it can't be them.

the real offender, ie the french state/the po-lice who actually killed the algerian's parents, gets off lightly.

i agree that the end of the film can be read as hopeful.

xpost

im interested that you guys read ateuil's lie to his parents about the algerian as racist, or as haneke intending it to be motivated for racist reasons and/or haneke providing the story as a 1:1 allegory of french colonialism--i only saw it once, and not recently, (and this may be because im an american not attuned to the sensitivities of the french/algerian "situation") but i remember taking it more or less on the face of it: ateuil's crime was that he blamed someone else for his misdeeds (right?) and fucked that persons life up, and then when it comes down to it he cant accept that--he continues to play himself as the victim. and plus the dude who is stalking him is not in fact the dude he wronged, but that dudes son, right?

tho jeez i havent seen it in a while so im probably misremembering! i just dont know that it was so "clear" that he should be indicted specifically for out-and-out racism, altho obviously race is an important part of the relationship.

max i think that's part of what makes caché great, that haneke overlays society onto the family, allowing you to see racism for what is is: not some thought-out ideology but a set of psychological defense mechanisms

he blamed someone else for his misdeeds (right?) and fucked that persons life up, and then when it comes down to it he cant accept that--he continues to play himself as the victim

for instance, this would describe racist white america to a t!

threatening Tarantino as most overdiscussed minor auteur

ya OK i can get that--im not really sure where enrique is getting his motives for lying to his parents as being specifically/explicitly racist?

well, i said that, and what i meant by it was that racism isn't so much thinking to oneself "that person is inferior!" as it is a process of scapegoating and externalising one's own guilt or confused feelings

the latter of which is exactly what auteil-as-child does (if i'm remembering right; if not, i would also enjoy discussing the movie i am currently making up in my head)

ya OK i can get that--im not really sure where enrique is getting his motives for lying to his parents as being specifically/explicitly racist?

-- max, Tuesday, March 18, 2008 4:01 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i think the film was definitely supposed to be about white europe's handling of the legacy of colonialism, not 'just' a psychological horror thing

ya i agree w/ that i just worry a little bit about grafting racial motivations onto all the characters' actions

well again that's why i think the film's so great - you can take that part or leave it - it works boht as a v.c. andrews-ish family mystery or as a national allegory

no but what i mean to say is that while i think the film (thinks it) has big things to say about race/class/colonialism--and those things it wants to say are present in the text--the specific motivations of the characters (in particular auteuil, as a boy, lying) have less to do with race than you think. but i can see where youre going. i just think child auteuil's reasons for lying are more complexly-shaded than "he hates the algerian" (i suppose thats not what youre saying, tho)

i've been trying to dislodge that idea from your mind for the last four posts!! you're exactly right - what makes auteil's childhood betrayal so heartbreaking is that the two of them actually seemed to be like any other brothers, having fun together, ribbing each other, etc

haha its not lodged in my mind--im just reading you and enrique lazily. i agree with this, more or less--iirc DA lies to his parents about the kid they've adopted; the problem for the film is that this is clearly meant to indict him for racism. and it's possible he was a racist kid, but kids get crazily jealous of their parents' attention -- form of sibling rivalry?--except i dont think its "clear" in the film that this is meant to indict him for racism

also this--childhood lies = racism--is a little lazy/easy, which is why i responded in the first place

would it be uncool to make a "what if the algerian guy was WHITE?!11??" move?

yeah calling me out for it actually made me have to think about what i actually meant, so thanks!

enrique it depends on if you have a point to make don't it

xpost--no, thats what i keep wondering. i actually feel like a putz talking about a movie i remember so poorly. it seems like its pretty obvious that for the movie to pack any kind of punch, the adopted kid who gets sent away needs to be at a disadvantaged position, i.e. if he's white, he needs to be poor so that auteuil's lying screws him over.

i guess "indicted for racism" implies that we the audience are supposed to be blaming auteuil for stuff beyond being a stupid kid (i.e. being racist), and i dont remember doing that. hes not a sympathetic character but as an adult that has more to do w/ his reaction to the videos than what he did before; the feeling i got was more of a "stupid things we do have dire consequences given the awfulness of society"--indicting the SYSTEM for racism more than auteuil. but enrique maybe youre hinting toward a more complex/subtle idea of "racism" than im giving you credit for (that is im reading you as saying that haneke wants us to see auteuil rat out the algerian kid BECAUSE the kid is algerian)

im not, by the way, defending the movie on the grounds that it indicts the SYSTEM for racism and is therefore, like, totally radical, man

Michael Haneke's CACHE (insert your own accent over the e)

it's not like a far-right, le pen thing, just the underlying assumption that whereas autueil is naturally french (biological offspring), the algerian (though technically a french citizen -- iirc algeria was not strictly a colony but an actual district of france) never can really be equal (he is the adopted son). like when DA is short with the black cyclist -- that undercurrent of casual racism. and it is a complex, only semi-racial thing because english people used to be like that toward the irish, i think, are probably are a bit towards eastern europeans now.

xpost

hahah i forgot that Ron Howard was going to do a remake!!

Something to puzzle over ...

No Country for Old Men: serial murderer, deaf to every human appeal for mercy, goes about his business with implacable dispatch—Academy Awards: best picture, best supporting actor, etc.

Michael Haneke's Funny Games remake: serial murderers, deaf to every human appeal for mercy, go about their business with implacable dispatch—back of the critical hand, lots of righteous huffing and puffing, etc.

Not much difference between the two, at least in my opinion, yet one movie's lionized, the other savaged as exploitive swill. Except arguably the Coens distance themselves more thoroughly from the corpse pile than Haneke ever could, who's more into closing the empathy gap vis-a-vis. (Or is he?—more on that below.) And if human investment's lacking it's the Coens and their (modified) gargoyle brood who seem the more culpable parties. Score one for the vilified Austrian there.

http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/film/2008/03/21/games-people-play/

critics in rather-be-entertained-than-berated-for-doing-their-job shocker.

"Not much difference between the two" if you wilfully overlook all the differences.

With all the talk I was wondering whether I was gonna walk out half way through. Those thoughts were completely set aside at the very moment the Painkiller track came on. Well of course I was going to like it!

Good thing he made it, surely no one can say its for that other specifc audience, as his French/German language films might be accused of being.

it's for a 'specific audience' of people he has contempt for, i.e. the multiplex audience. i still can't figure out why wanting watts to take down the two torturing psychos who attack her family is something we need to feel bad about. some people advance as far as saying it's because her family is rich -- i hate rich people as much as the next guy, but this is pretty o_O.

what is 'the right thing to do' in the scenario the film sketches? i don't think the arguments advanced in favour of this film make logical sense.

All violence is bad and while the extreme situation watts is in might justify her actions, it dosesn't make them something we should celebrate.

It's a tough point to argue since the relief and even celebration at watt's triumph is so obvious and natural. But I'm reminded of when Harold Shipman topped himself and Blunkett's reaction when he heard the news was to wonder if it was too early to open the champagne. At the time I thought that was pretty despicable, and that there was really nothing to celebrate in that tragic end to a tragic tale.

No, you could equally say he was putting the film more out there. That is to say that its for a mixed audience of people. I don't really care if he has any contempt for me or anybody.

i don't think getting that "yes!" reaction to the villain in a film getting theirs is like celebrating revenge. if we see injustice done, we want it to be stopped. all violence being bad does not stop it from happening, and there's no moral sense in the idea that watts's character has increased the sum of violence in the world.

blunkett's reaction is gross because he has no connection with the people who died; because it's a cheap political move to make him look hard; because the damage was done and the danger was over; because it was suicide.

but also the "yes!" reaction is usually quite short-lived in films. it's not usually the point of the film. i guess haneke reckons the revenge genre gives a false impression of the world, that in reality there aren't marauding bastards who will torture your family, and that we invent these scenarios to feel good about ourselves. if that's so -- which it isn't exactly; films don't have a duty to represent the median average of human experience -- why not present a 'true picture of the world', rather than a sort of deliberately thin version of a genre picture?

xpost

i don't think getting that "yes!" reaction to the villain in a film getting theirs is like celebrating revenge.

I think it is, at least a little. Of course there's a sense in which we just want to see injustice stopped but some ways of doing so are morally preferable to others, and you could argue that encouraging people to react in that way might make them more inclined to mob justice, terrorising paedophiles and paeditricians, etc.

It's not a great argument I'll admit, trying to draw a link even more tenuous than that between on-screen and real life violence, and yes there alternative and less controversial points he could have made.

'time of the wolf' has a horrific scene where huppert wants justice for her child (she gets attacked iirc, can't remember), and obviously, this being a post-apocalyptic scenario, there isn't any; there's just the strongmen, and no rule of law. it's banal enough maybe, but you don't get many films that address fundamental things like the need for impartially enforced laws.

but anyway in the concrete scenario the film presents, watts has no other option. if he'd presented it so that she had the option of having the police calmly apprehend the villains and bring them to justice, OK, but that would be a pretty rubbish thriller and the film would end right quick. but what is this desire to police people's instincts all about? what is haneke's reaction to injustice, brutality, cruelty -- things the world is not that short on?

people have been arguing that movies make people violent since they began -- but a lot of social reformers and police, early on, said that actually the slums have been far *less* violent since the cinemas came along because instead of getting blind drunk people go and watch cowboy films. MORAL.

I just liked that it repressed pay-off, basically liked the "no!" which is even rarer. Even if it probably isn't very novel thing to do.

Of all the films of his I've seen its probably the least I took much out of, mostly to do with the fact that, as talked about on this thread, he's on one level arguing with stuff I haven't watched much of in years.

The 'they're rich' argument is ridiculous I agree. There ws a feeling of numbness at the end; but bcz was thin, I didn't feel a huge loss at the fact that the family was murdered. I never got to know the family, and since this was a film...xps

WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT

This movie scared the shit out of me and I couldn't use the stairway in my apt block for at least a month and I can never watch anything with Michael Pitt in it ever again (that Last Days DVD haunts me) I hate violent movies anyway, it creeps me out that anybody would want to see violent inflicted on other people, even fake violence. So I suppose this film was not for people like me, but it seemed like, regardless of moral situation, if Watts was right or wrong (I think we all know she was in the right) it sets up this situation where the film makes violence okay which is what films like to do. All films pretty much try to put violence in this sealed off moral vacuum. The movie is about movie violence and the morality of watching, not how that transfers into real life imo.

the original was kind of shitty so will never watch this.

I though the original was interesting, but I was about 19 when I saw it, so maybe it wouldn't make a such a big impression on me today. Anyway, it was pretty much a single-concept movie, so I don't see any reason why I'd want to watch the remake. Unless it's radically different from the original?

This movie is like 30 minutes of Naomi Watts waving a hair dryer at a cellphone. FUCK!

Like a real torture-porn movie like Hostel actually looks better than Haneke's shit. All his shots are so economical. It's supposed to look dry and scarier with its plainness and clinical nature, but it just looks like someone getting stabbed on nice Ikea furniture.

Cache was boring as fuck too. I'm totally 100% done with this guy forever.

it just looks like someone getting stabbed on nice Ikea furniture

That's most of Adult.'s album covers, I think.

what haneke do you like whiney? can't really understand being bored by cache but somehow enraptured by time of the wolf - they're both excellent but not because of any momentum or pace.

also, did this guy ever do a chaucer adaptation? i think i used to go in circles on imdb after hearing about it and could neither find nor dispel it.

The movie is about movie violence and the morality of watching, not how that transfers into real life imo

This doesn't stop the original from being an empty piece of shit movie, though.

xpost - cache and funny games are the only two i've seen, and i'm not gonna see anymore.

its pretty funny how angry this movie makes people

to be fair, i'm pretty easy to anger

ASSHOLE

dan too tho i bet hes bitched abt it movie on 5+ threads

"also, did this guy ever do a chaucer adaptation?"

im gonna go with NO. kafka he did do.

im so over haneke im not even gonna give him the satisfaction of being outraged on the internet

Like a real torture-porn movie like Hostel actually looks better than Haneke's shit. All his shots are so economical. It's supposed to look dry and scarier with its plainness and clinical nature, but it just looks like someone getting stabbed on nice Ikea furniture.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, March 31, 2009 12:23 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

now this is just ridiculous - haneke is a crazily gifted filmmaker even if he does fuck around w/some self righteous bullshit - eli roth on the other hand is a complete hack - if u wanted to say mikke pwnd haneke u might hav a better case

miike

hostel is great imo

eh hostels pretty shitty except at the end when its pretty great

im so over haneke im not even gonna give him the satisfaction of being outraged on the internet

idk i never saw this remake maybe its terrible but i really loved the piano teacher feel like for that alone he deserves more than just disdain for the 2nd rate

loved this

still refuse to see it because of hating the smugness of the original so much, which is kind of tragic considering that the movie was pretty great right up until 2/3 of the way through when it turned into a meaningless, self-indulgent sermon full of suck

never saw the original so no direct comparison wrt actors, kind of dont give a fuck what haneke believes the movie is doing as a indictment of voyeuristic violence blah blah - its a smart movie, v v economical in the way it is filmed, several great heartbreaking moments where you get a taste of relief and then it gets DENIED (obv one of which is the rewind thing, but that is just the most overt moment of lots of points where your expectations are dashed), really just a cold and effective movie.

oh and btw this is about 10 bagazillion miles away from the whole torture porn aesthetic so looking at it through that lens is just kind of wrongheaded IMO, no matter what haneke might want.

xpost huh well i dunno that i would expect it to be different but it worked for me

The rewind thing was the straw that broke the camel's back for me; I was able to deal with the minor nods that broke the fourth wall but when dude flat-out rewound the film so he wouldn't have to deal with his brother's death, I basically was like "fuck you, the rules of pain and loss apply to you, too, unless the writer/director is just trying to be a self-righteous dick".

oh hold up is it made clear that they are brothers in the original because that is not at all the case in the remake.

i think i was ok with the implacable evil vibe which allowed for the rewind scene to work for me - i dont really see the two dudes in white as human at all, all the weird fake emotional taunting back and forth, start/stop crying scenes from the less talkative of the two, the constantly changing names, and of course the rewind scene makes them somehow alien and other in a way where i accept that the rules dont apply to them somehow. (of course i feel this way about Chigurgh or whatever in No Country and no one agrees with me there either so...)

...so to recap. the idea is that he remakes it shot for shot, to give an american audience a chance to see it in their own language because they didn't see it when it was in a foreging language?

_______

Gross
$1,294,640 (USA) (27 April 2008)

____________

ahahahahahahahaahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

chew on that.

ok so the real rub on that is:

The Strangers took place in Florence, South Carolina on a budget of $9,000,000. Filming began on October 10, 2006 and finished in early 2007. After two postponements, the film was eventually released on May 30, 2008 in North America. The film was marketed as being inspired by a "true story", and grossed $81.6 million at the box office worldwide.

i mean honestly that statistic makes me surprised that Haneke himself isn't out doing a door to door torture and humliliate campaign in America

xxpost

yeah, i guess that's about what you can expect to make on a film that's meant as a chastisement to the audience.

(i did like the original though, in spite of it's self-righteousness. it was at very least well made and interesting.)

the strangers is GREAT

Man Michael Pitt loves him some Leopold & Loeb.

― da croupier, Tuesday, September 25, 200

^^^^^

Yeah just watched The Strangers tonight and it's a damn sight better than Haneke's point making exercise.

i mean honestly that statistic makes me surprised that Haneke himself isn't out doing a door to door torture and humliliate campaign in America

i think he prefers to do it from art houses.

I liked the Strangers until everyone started taking stupid pills ("holy shit, I just drove to my friend's house and someone threw a rock into my window! oh wow, and their car is totally fucked up! the house looks broken into...I think I'll walk through it AS QUIETLY AS POSSIBLE").

Haneke has signed on to direct a production of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" at the Madrid opera in 2012 or so. Expect laughs a-plenty.

what do you mean?

Haneke has worked in theater and has had some training in music, so its not out of place exactly...

yeah, he worked in theatre for most of his career and has directly plenty of opera.

"plenty of opera" = one Don Giovanni that sucked.

For the longest time I have wanted to see Funny Games. The original. Then yesterday, I was in the library and took the box and I nearly rofled: I had seen this about ten years ago. Had completely forgotten the title and that it was Haneke's movie. But fuck me I was awestruck again. I remember being floored by it. Now even more, seeing it again. Such a hard movie. Fucking ace; Now I have to see all of Haneke. And no, I haven't seen any other of his movies. lolol (I also watched The Seventh Seal.)

oh i'm sure there will be a few people along to correct you, tell you that you have simply been manipulated, and show you the error of your ways.

nathalie, you are not correct, you have simply been manipulated, please see the error in your ways.

^ see

I like how much they hate this movie (original and also the remake) on Allmovie.com. In some fucked up way I love it even more. (This is very unlike me, I tend to be influenced by reviews way too much. lolol)

I can understand why people would think Haneke is haughty (?) but I can stomach that (esp when it's from a brilliant filmmaker). I like how he makes you complicit in the pleasure of violence. (Does that make sense?) I also loved the choice of victims. Bourgeois and not likeable until you strip the veneer away.

"funny games" is awfully pretentious, i think.

lol this movie

formerly known as lol this guy

should've renamed it "lol games" for american audiences

I was about to watch this at about 2.30 last night until I read an ILM thread saying, 'don't whatever you do, watch it before you go to bed', which chilled me a bit. Generally I'm fearless about these intense films though.

I did that last night. No problems whatsoever. Strangely the suffocating feeling immediately evaporated after the film was finished.

I think I like violence a bit too much maybe? :-(

Maybe you just have a healthy appetite for provocative, challenging cinema! That's how I console myself about my horror film fandom..

I have always had a very strong interest - at one point even obsession - with psychopaths. I love yet don't share (completely) Haneke's view on the world. Maybe Haneke is in this way very European (and why he doesn't seem to be loved as much in the US?) I think why it didn't really scare me (afterwards!), was that it was not only horror but also about how people view horror. It was meta, a critique on horror. So kind of removed as well. Probably doesn't really make much sense.

Yeah that seems right; here and particularly around and at my uni people worship him as this New Auteur. He's become this popular and even hip namedrop. I have only seen the White Ribbon (which i liked but didn't ADORE) but I have Funny Games and Cache ready to watch once I've finished this critical commentary!

Cache, Piano Teacher and WR will be something for the next week. I wanna see all of his movies. :-)

i'm sure everyone is pining for my voice to be added to this ongoing fruitful discussion, but i finally watched the original (cuz it streams no netflix and the remake doesn't) and i think it's pretty much a classic.

as for the fourth wall stuff, i didn't think of the rewind scene as, like, the one dude deciding that the rules of pain & loss don't apply to him... i guess to me it worked in the same way american filmmakers will pull the rug out in front of you with something like a dream/hallucination sequence, but this was obviously way more overt, which i thought was great. the winking at the camera and talking to the audience was a bit "cute"... maybe it was more novel 13 years ago but it was a bit lol now.

otherwise i thought there was tons of tension & thought the two dudes were sufficiently awful and creepy. they were scary and i wanted them to not get their way. so success i guess.

I HAVE A QUESTION THOUGH

**a bit spoilery here obv**

for people who watched the remake, how did they handle the phone thing? i was willing to believe that in 1997 a family would only have one cell phone amongst the three of them & that there was no other way of communication (no laptops or w/e) in the house so they were indeed trapped there even tho the two kids left. in 2007... this really wouldn't work for me, so i think the remake would suffer dramatically if it does play it straight to the original and the family only has one cell phone that gets pwnd by the water in the sink. is that what happens? pretty lame, if so.

& like, in the original, the father is all "i don't know the number for the police" (i guess this could happen in europe?) & haneke makes it seem like they can't use the phone cuz they don't know any numbers by heart & that the speed dial isn't working because the phone is wet, but it would've worked if they knew some numbers off the tops of their heads which... okay, it's 1997! technology was worse and we were all dumber! i guess i'll ride with that... but i just don't see how in the remake he could actually convince me that they didn't have any means of communication with the outside world

bump, still curious

I don't remember exactly (watched the US version not the European) but the phone does run into some water trouble and I think there is some added signal is down stuff.

In Europe there would be a simple emergency number (this is the case in the UK).

Not a massive problem given the fourth wall and what its going for: they aren't meant to get away and there will be no justice hooray.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIZVcRccCx0

I don't remember exactly (watched the US version not the European) but the phone does run into some water trouble and I think there is some added signal is down stuff.

In Europe there would be a simple emergency number (this is the case in the UK).

Not a massive problem given the fourth wall and what its going for: they aren't meant to get away and there will be no justice hooray.

Don't they travel across the border? Or it is pretty remote so calling a 100 (?) number wld mean a police station far from the place? Me I am far too in love w the film (original), so I find reasons to explain this. Lol

I think they were at a remote resort but you'd think there be some police around.

The actors in the German language version are dropping like flies.

http://derstandard.at/1277336652575/Schauspieler-Frank-Giering-38-jaehrig-gestorben

Found a story in English:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i4398ded06f46a32c32f397b896a91f6f