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Funny Games
(2008)
Directed by
Michael Haneke
Review by
Zach Saltz
Funny Games
is not
merely the torture porn it appears to be.
On the surface, Michael Haneke’s American remake of his own 1997
Austrian cult classic is nothing more than an exercise in pure sadism,
complete with golf clubs used as batons and whips, pillowcases wrapped
over heads, and the ever-increasing unfortunate
Cell-Phone-Which-Selectively-Shuts-Off (a sort of modern variation on
the Selective-Number-No-Longer-In-Service).
Indeed, there are more scenes of physical and psychological
torture in this movie than explosions in a Michael Bay flick.
When Naomi Watts’ character, Ann, asks her sadistic captor why
they simply don’t kill her, Michael Pittman’s deadpan Peter responds
coolly: “You shouldn’t forget the importance of entertainment”; and
somehow this line will not only provide the capricious mood ripe for
mutilation and beyond, but will also serve a deeper meaning when
considering the film’s ultimate purpose.
The set up is formulaic, at best: A smug upper-class family (Tim Roth,
Watts, and Devon Gearhart as the son) arrives at their idyllic gated
vacation home on Long Island.
On the way to the house, they casually sift through album after
album of classical music, quizzing each other on which composer wrote
which piece.
They run into
their neighbors and ask when a good time to play a round of golf would
be.
Once they arrive at the
house, they are so self-absorbed with their own material possessions
that they do not notice their hungry dog, pining for attention.
Oh, dare I say that Haneke has something provocative to say about the
new American bourgeoisie?
Such cool and uninflected cinematography while accentuation the
solipsism of nuveau riche seems worthy of Buñuel (to whom Ed
Gonzalez likens Haneke), but I feel his style lends itself more to Jean
Renoir in Rules of the Game, whose camera catches the actions of
its characters but whose viewers are asked to interpret the significance
(or, more importantly, the insignificance) of their screen figures.
We have relatively little moral grounding in which to make our
assumptions about George, Ann, and Little Georgie, but after several
unbearable minutes of their dull banal affluence, the viewer is quick to
find them guilty of being dull.
In any event, the unnamed family encounters two impeccably white-clad
polo-sporting young men calling themselves Peter and Paul (Michael Pitt
and Brady Corbet) who are a mix of Vladimir and Estragon and Leopold and
Loeb.
They refuse to leave
the house, hold the family captive, and kill each of them off.
Complete with unnerving self-reflexivity (Pitt’s Peter breaking
the “fourth wall” and directly glancing and communicating with audience
members) and use of unorthodox technique (one scene is literally rewound
and altered to better fit the film’s profession of the excitement of
evil versus good), Haneke’s film runs the gamut in experimentation, but
nothing is quite as experimental as the idea that murderers ought to
have the ability to express their opinions, too.
The acting in Funny Games is proficient, if not slightly
one-dimensional.
Tim Roth
basically reprises his role as Mr. Orange in
Reservoir Dogs,
except this time instead of getting shot in the stomach, he is whacked
in the leg and has to sit out for the remainder of the movie.
Naomi Watts and little Devon Gearhart scream quite a bit, but are
nonetheless effective in some major sequences, such as when Watts runs
along the side of a street and when Gearhart sneaks into a neighbor’s
house.
But Pitt and Corbett
steal the show here, as they should, since their characters have been
deliberately allotted by Haneke as the film’s actual heroes -- quaint
and humorous murderers who light up the screen with their presence.
Jim Emerson, the plebian editor and (hopefully) temporary replacement
for Roger Ebert writes: “If you liked those pictures from Abu Ghraib,
you’ll love Funny Games!”
But this is precisely the point Haneke is getting at: the
abhorrence of violence is wholly relative to perspective.
Do we truly want to see Ann talking on the phone to her affluent
suburban friends?
Are George
and Georgie all that remarkable on their miniature yacht?
Do we want to see more classical music composer sound-off?
Or would we rather see something exciting, like the use of
weapons and scenes of utter fear and dread?
The brilliance of
Funny Games is that it makes us feel
depraved, on the one hand, for playing voyeur to torture, but also for
condoning the repugnant behavior of the two mean by finding their scenes
most interesting.
Haneke
knows his audience to an almost unhealthy extent.
The ultimate
verdict on Funny Games depends on whether the sum of its parts
add up to a satisfying whole.
I believe it does.
While many of its sequences are admittedly dull, relentless, and
unremitting in their stark and unblinking portrait of brutality and
torture, the boredom is contained for a purpose.
Haneke is too intelligent a director to make a bland and routine
slasher flick, and this film seriously questions the validity of the
genre, not in the framework of conventional good versus evil, but rather
no good and all evil.
Funny Games may be more of a concept than an actual movie, but the
conversations which will naturally arise afterward are worth the price
of admission alone.
Rating:
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