Funny Games U.S. (2007)

The 'Funny Games' Experience Vol.1

Watching Haneke's remake of Funny Games before the original 1997 release is definitely another one of my weird viewing experiences (maybe I should post a list of those here someday)

First I saw the poster above. And then came the news about the cast, followed by my realization of how long it has been since I last saw a Haneke film; I didn't even watch Hidden (Cache) despite all the hype and praise it received and I practically saw none of his films in theaters. It was quite hard to suppress my interest after this trailer, but I still read a couple of reviews before finally deciding to engage in the 'Funny Games Experience'. I am calling it an 'experience' because everyone seems to have agreed on the fact that it's thesis statement rather than a story and an experiment rather than a film; both of which I will respectfully disagree in the upcoming few paragraphs. For me, it's an 'experience' because it's really something to see a skilled director like Haneke himself do a shot-by-shot remake of his own film merely after 10 years the original one was released.

Much of the speculation in the reviews I read (understandably) focused on why this movie was made rather than what it's about. Being someone who didn't have the chance to see the original one, I saw this as a chance to be the different voice in the crowd. I wanted to watch the remake first and focus more on the qualities of this film rather than context with which it was remade, which is obviously an issue that I cannot properly address before seeing both of the films. Therefore, the review of the original Funny Games (also the volume 2 of this article) will cover these contextual analyses and comparisons, which you will be able to see here quite soon. This one, I'll keep limited to the film itself and nothing more.

Another point to clarify: When quoting some critics and bloggers throughout this review, I am giving myself the liberty to quote any commentary that was targeting the first film as if it was written for this remake. I think they all will be relevant since I expect the whole idea to be the same for both movies.

Shall we begin?

Haneke appears to be obsessed with Stanley Kubrick; his helpless admiration as well as his homages to Kubrick's works are painfully obvious whenever you are slapped with one of them throughout the film - mainly because they lack any subtlety or intelligence. Even the trailer itself is a pastiche of the original A Clockwork Orange trailer, although not equally bizarre. The opening sequence is essentially the same as that of The Shining, but it also is a scene that serves as the brief introduction for our bourgeois family at hand. Not surprisingly, there is a feeling of artificiality when it comes to the depiction of this family's happiness and a certain sense of mistrust to their perfection. As will be confirmed further in the film, everything is actually on the edge of a knife for them, despite their tightly-secured homes or carefully selected neighbours and friends (as you see, there are a lot of reasons to panic). However, instead of observing these hidden imperfections in the bourgeois culture, this time we will rather enjoy watching this 'perfect' family being tortured and played with; because, honestly, who would be interested to witness the same things happening to a lower-class, African-American family who is already suffering at the hands of poverty and/or social inequality?

Enter the executioners who wear white, appear extremely sympathetic and do all these tortures purely for their joy (or without any apparent reason). If one of them would be named Alex, I would be vomiting on screen.

If he was half as insightful as Kubrick was though, Haneke would've realized that not speculating on his/her own films is extremely essential for any director when he/she makes a highly-interpretable film like Funny Games itself. When you tell everyone what your movie means and why it was made, you are dismissing them from participating and taking an active role in the perception of the movie. You are reducing a variety of opinions to a singular truth and killing all the valuable interpretations that the film would otherwise receive. Somewhere I came across a critic who called Funny Games a fascist exercise in filmmaking - I will agree but it has got more to do with Haneke's approach to explaining his film than the film itself. I don't believe that a director's intentions should be among the guidelines for anyone when trying to interpret a certain film - who's to say he did not include/leave out certain things unconsciously?

In many of his interviews, Haneke states his aim was to make a movie that would criticise our unhealthy consumer relationships with violence and the films (mostly American) that reduce it to mere instrument for our cheap thrills. And his way of criticising would be breaking the walls of illusion and repulsing the audiences who come to see this movie expecting 'cheap thrills'. This is great, but only in theory; because either he was not sincere with this statement or he gradually drowned in the depths of A Clockwork Orange and Kubrick's influence as he was making this film. Funny Games is, above everything else, a beautiful, delicate and stylized depiction of violence and torture, just like Kubrick's masterpiece is. How many films can you name that uses a color as effectively as white is used in this film; a white specifically chosen to emphasize the contrasts inherent in both the surroundings of the family and their humble torturers? Have you ever seen the color look so threatening and evil? How often are you terrified by subtle imagery like a rolling golf ball or a couple of broken eggs? Can't we say that the famous sequences of 'gates closing on the family' or the 'television covered in blood' transcend tens of minutes that most films have to offer nowadays, in terms of expressional strength?

These technical achievements would be a huge plus, had they not been contradictory to the stated purpose of the film, which is to shock and repulse the violence-loving audience. At this point, it's easy to claim that Haneke achieves the very opposite of what he had set out to do. The Austrian virtuoso should understand that 'enjoying' the films like Hostel and Saw IV is not about roaring with laughter or squirming with orgasmic delight when watching the violence on screen; it's more like the feeling when you are going down in a roller coaster; scary, uncomfortable but thrilling nonetheless. So those among us who are comfortable with buying violent imagery to entertain themselves will not be shocked by Funny Games; on the contrary they will immediately consume it and then will blurp about the slow pacing and lack of on-screen violence.

Also, how much of an art is it to be able to alienate and disgust the audience? How difficult is it to achieve that? You can simply shoot an insignificant object for six continuous hours and voila! - alienated audience. You can film a real autopsy to obtain the most genuine repulsion. Aside from Haneke's failure, his mission statement sounds quite unimpressive to me as well; even if he was able to accomplish what he was set out to do, how much would we have loved the resulting product?

This does not necessarily mean that the film is lacking any honest attempt to disturb its audience and make them think about what they really love. Haneke is aware that voyeurism is participation and he does his best to make us feel and acknowledge that fact as well. There are no clean getaways from Funny Games; no conventional happy endings that we can hide behind and feel 'relieved', neglecting and forgetting the actual process that fed our exhilaration; no more lying to ourselves that we are actually on the victim's side and no more denying of what we really enjoy. Every crumble of hope that was meticulously laid down by the director eventually withers and dies, every attempt the family makes to escape from the mansion fails, and the villains constantly address the audience; sometimes by talking, sometimes merely by winking or glancing, to remind us that we are a part of all this extravaganza. 'Is this enough?' asks Paul at one point, fiercely; suggesting that if we want it to stop, it will stop; that the family is being tortured only because we want to watch. Suspension of disbelief is much less important that the necessity that this family should suffer and Paul does not shy away even from rewinding the film upon an unexpected turn of events. Haneke leaves us alone with the thrill that we were desperately seeking and the guilt that is brought along; with nowhere to hide them and no way to deny them. That is exactly why I think Funny Games works on a surprisingly different level than what was intended for it. It is David Ansen's opinion that "Haneke means this exercise in cinematic sadism as a critique of the typical way Hollywood movies exploit violence on screen and turn the viewer into a bloodthirsty consumer of cheap thrills." He has a valid point, but what Haneke means to do and ends up doing are two different things. It might indeed be a reaction to Hollywood exploitation of violence but every reaction is not necessarily a criticism; and I think this film works better as an observation or a confrontation rather than a critique.

Or let me put it this way: If there is something that Funny Games criticizes, it's not the actual act of consumption but rather it's the hypocrisy of buying on-screen violence for our genuine sadistic joys and then denying them afterwards - almost like a post-orgasmic guilt.

Kubrick's genius on the other hand, was that he was able to tell the same thing approximately 30 years before Haneke did, also vastly surpassing the Austrian director's skills at that. For me the biggest flaw of this film is the fact that it's not able to deliver anything that the 10-minute 'Singin in the Rain' rape scene in A Clockwork Orange isn't capable of expressing. Haneke's work is overshadowed by the films that he obviously admires, which prevent him from finding his own voice this time and tell us something different.

I think that sums up my own perception of the film but below are my responses to some of the reviews that I read before seeing the film, which hopefully will fill out any holes that I have left behind.

6/10

I Disagree

*"Funny Games is an experiment, and should be approached as one."

Not to mock anyone but whoever can say that obviously didn't see any seriously-experimental film and what it looks like. The fact that the characters wink to the audience three times is not enough to label a film 'experimental' because the rest of what we see doesn't really fit into the description. Yes it's quite self-aware and yes "the concept is the movie" as Jim Emerson stated; but what Haneke has done feels more like executing a couple of overused stylistical innovations that saw better days than this. Experimental films should experiment, try new things; what Funny Games does is making use of some old technical tricks to get its point across.

That being said, I will admit that the idea of remaking this film can be considered experimental, just like Gus Van Sant's Psycho is experimental. Why he did that and what he was able to achieve with this remake will be coming up in the second volume of this article.

*"[Haneke] still crosses lines here more often than he justifies crossing them."

Confronting us with our long-denied, unorthodox joys is enough justification for me.

* "Basically torture porn every bit as manipulative and reprehensible as Hostel, even if it's tricked out with intellectual pretension."

* "Torture porn for the arthouse crowd"
* "This is Scream for arthouse aficionados"

These are probably the simplest observations to come up with about this movie. How can it be torture porn when there is no explicit torture on screen? If Hostel is the porn, Funny Games can be a softcore erotic film, not showing what we are dying to see but rather making us feel and imagine what's going on; arguably delivering a more satisfying experience. It's not gory details or physical violance that's centerpiece in this film but rather the emotional torture. The fact that it can be consumed by the torture-porn loving audiences does not necessarily put Haneke's film in the same league as Saw IV and Captivity.

*"Haneke's admonishments are disturbing only in the sense that they're never self-critical"

Which directors, exactly, are self-critical in their films? Can self-criticism even be a reason to make films? How megalomaniac would that be?

I Agree

*"Even if I am wrong about all this, who does Haneke think he's fooling? ... And the film's amazing half-million opening weekend and $1905 per-screen average pretty much proves him wrong, whether it proves me right or not."

So much for shocking and alienating torture-porn fans.

*"Yet Haneke is trafficking in the very thing he means to critique"

Well, not exactly. At least he doesn't use on-screen violence like Natural Born Killers did, while trying to criticise the very same thing. But still a valid statement.

*"Writer-director Haneke wants to torture you for loving violent movies"

He indeed sets out to do that, but in my humble opinion, fails miserably.

So there it is. Just like the external links under Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the links above are also subject to change as I come across more worthy material on the internet.

Stay tuned for volume 2 and feel free to indulge me and send your comments in the meantime.