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Funny
Games
(1997)
 
Since Pauline Kael first lauded Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, the role of violence in
cinema has been one of the premier issues among film theorists,
audiences and policy makers alike. Varying degrees of graphic
violence certainly existed in the medium prior to Bonnie
and Clyde,
in such classics as White Heat, Psycho and The
Killers, but
Kael’s analysis of Penn’s seminal masterpiece ushered
in the era of post-modern film violence. Since then there have
been countless intentional studies of the phenomenon, ranging
from Oliver Stone’s irresponsible Natural Born Killers to
the various violent homages of Quentin Tarantino. One of the
more successful films to explore the relationship between human
cruelty and the medium of film was the 1997 Austrian film
Funny Games, which remains hauntingly disturbing and
simultaneously deeply insightful.
The film begins with a game of innocence, as a middle class
family tries to guess opera composers on the car stereo during
their drive to their country house where they summer. Upon
their arrival, it doesn’t take long for Anna (Susanne
Lothar) and Georg (The Lives of Others star Ulrich
Mühe)
and their son Schorschi (Stefan Clapczynski) to sense something
is amiss. Their neighbors are acting strange, and two odd young
men oppress them with overbearing demands about borrowing eggs
and gold clubs. Though the youths go by the names Peter (Frank
Giering) and Paul (Arno Frisch), the men are anything saints.
Beginning with the murder of the family dog, Peter and Paul
terrorize the family for their own sadistic amusement with
harrowing results.
As violent as the picture is, none of the disturbing acts (which
include a brutal bludgeoning, a shotgun to a character’s
head, and forced stripping) are ever shown in the film, generally
occurring out-of-frame, but well within earshot. This leaves
the viewer to experience the violence through only audio stimulus
and the characters’ reactions and leaves a potent, visceral
taste in one’s mouth.
The levels of commentary on violence extend well beneath the
graphic nature of the narrative alone. As in Psycho and Peeping
Tom, the killers gain an additional level of control by
taking on the post-modern tormentor-as-filmmaker archetype.
In this case, Peter and Paul openly interact with the audience
and comment on the narrative flow. At one point, events don’t
transpire as they’d like, so they rewind the film in
order to maintain control of their captives. When Paul asks
the audience to partake in a wager on the outcome of the film,
he effectively forces the viewer to cease passively watching
and become and active part of the horrible events which fill
the majority of the movie. This betting on human lives lowers
the ordeal to the level of a simple sport, despite the fatal
consequences of the ironic “funny games.”
As if Peter and Paul’s toying with the audience weren’t
haunting enough, the film’s real director, Michael Haneke,
plays his own grimace-inducing game behind the camera. The
camerawork has little movement, which forces the content of
the scene to be the focus and not showy zooms and flowing tracking
shots. Instead, we are given, at the most disturbing point
in the film, a seemingly endless still shot. Not only does
the camera not move, but the shocked characters appear posed
in still-life for minutes at a time. If it weren’t for
the flickering image of a blood-covered television screen,
I would have thought it was a horrifyingly cathartic photograph.
Add to the stillness the lack of a musical score, which is
usually so overbearing in a thriller of this nature. The minimalist
nature of the film leaves the viewer with nothing but the raw
violent emptiness of the human soul.
In a further commentary on the relationship between violence
and moving images, Peter and Paul call one another Beavis and
Butthead, referring to the notoriously graphic and culturally
influential American cartoon of the mid 1990s, as well as Tom
and Jerry, two extremely violent cartoons from an earlier supposedly
more innocent time. When Anna asks them why they don’t
just kill the family straight out, they respond with the real
key to the film: “Don’t forget about entertainment
value. We’d all be derived of our pleasure.” The
movie is a two-hour commentary on society’s obsession
with violence and human suffering, especially in film, yet
it is so succinctly summed up in this short line.
Funny Games is one of those films which is vitally
important on a historical and academic level, but is so effective
at making its statement that it becomes almost unbearable to
watch in the context of entertainment. I happen to enjoy a
thoughtful film with something insightful to say about the
world, and even more so if it comments on cinema itself, so Funny
Games was a pleasurable experience for
me. I can say with certainty that ninety percent or so of the
moviegoing public would disagree with me on this, or would
find it enjoyable for the very reasons the film condemns, but
I recommend the film all the same, especially for other lovers
of film as fascinated with cinema violence as I am.
-Mark
Moreland
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2004-2009 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Michael
Haneke
Writer: Michael
Haneke
Starring: Susanne
Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering, Stefan Clapczynski
Distributor: Attitude
Films
Runtime: 108
min
Rating: Not
Rated
Release Date: March
11, 1998
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