Funny Games
Funny Games
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Synopsis

An unnerving, controversial exploration of violence from the director of The Seventh Continent and Benny's Video. A wealthy couple and their young son arrive at their seemingly peaceful summer home and soon find themselves at the mercy of a pair of inexplicably calm and cruel young men, who torment them with their "funny games." The perspective of the film shifts to suggest second-hand audience participation in the horror. "It''s an uncomfortable, distressing, and altogether provocative take on the global culture of media violence that not only draws the hapless viewer in, but also forces them into the role of fait accompli, like it or not" (Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle). Winner for Best Director at the 1997 Chicago International Film Festival. In German with English subtitles. Michael Haneke---Austria---1997---103 mins.

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   | Lewis#4

The “funny game” at the beginning of this wrenching film is a “Name that Tenor” car game. A sophisticated couple with an ample collection of aria discs divert themselves with it as they drive to their secluded lake house. Later that day, ensconced in that house, seemingly protected from mayhem by a high gate, the couple and their young son find themselves in the power of a pair of well-spoken, tennis-attired monsters, whose own parlor games move from the merely annoying to the lethally violent. In many of Michael Haneke’s films, violence lies concealed beneath the surface of a complacent bourgeois existence and indeed is subtly woven into the DNA of that existence. In this film, the violence is imposed by outsiders, preppie psychopaths who amuse themselves with shockingly sadistic “funny games.” This is a tough piece of work, tough because it confounds expectations created by a lifetime of movie attendance, tough because it teases us with moments of false hope, tough because it seems to make us complicit in the madness. When Haneke has one of his Leopold-and-Loeb pair address the camera directly--this happens more than once--it would seem that he is positioning us as confederates of these hellhounds. When the same character, unhappy with a certain unexpected turn of events, grabs a television remote and reverses the film itself in order to make things right, Haneke is making a point about modern media as an accessory to numbing violence. Does not this grim j’accuse add to the bulging store of cinematic violence? It does, but it’s a violence without tingle or glamor. This is a compelling and well-made film, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Its all-pervading gloom is almost unbearable.

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