In 1997, Michael Haneke wrote and directed Funny Games, a film that has always been famous for the large number of viewers leaving the cinema: there are few people I know who can watch it unflinchingly in its entirety: when I rented it on DVD I had to take breaks to allow myself some breathing space. This film has now been reshot for the US market and is slated for release in early 2008, starring among others Naomi Watts and Michael Pitt. The synopsis of the plot reads like standard suspense movie fodder: a family consisting of a father, a mother, and their young sons, retreats to a holiday cabin, where they are visited by two young men, dressed in impeccable white, who start to play mind games with them: at first, the torment is psychological, then the parents are tortured, the son is shot, after that the man and the film ends with the mother being casually disposed off. The good guys do not win in Haneke’s film: the victims are dead, the perpetrators are apparently not compromised by their actions and return to the world of the living to repeat their games with another family.
I wonder what its reception will be now that it can reach a wider audience, and I also wonder why Haneke wanted to do a shot by shot remake; I have an idea why, though: this film’s funny games are being played with us, and this element of manipulation is one of the reasons why watching it is such a harrowing experience. Although the movie is very violent and although the violence progresses methodically and at a steadfast pace towards its inevitable conclusion, all violent acts, except one, happen outside the frame. For instance, in the scene in which the son is shot as the result of a botched game, we hear the shot and the screams, but we see one of the murderers fixing himself a sandwich in the kitchen. The film’s force stems from the fact that we are being forced to witness the emotional aftermath of the violence to its fullest extent.
Haneke springs his trap with a sure hand: towards the end of the film, the mother gets hold of the murderers’ shotgun and shoots one of the young men. At this point, in a movie theater, we can witness an emotional release of some magnitude: usually there are people applauding and laughing, because by conventional standards, this is the moment we have all been waiting for, educated as we are by standard Hollywood scripts. This is where the film springs its trap: it is the only moment of violence we see happening within the frame, an act by one of the victims. In an astounding deus ex machina moment, the surviving murderer reaches for the remote control and winds back Haneke’s film, after which the film proceeds to its inevitable conclusion: as they go back by boat to the village, the murderers throw the woman overboard, bound. And that is the end of the game that has been played on us, an end to the complicity the audience has willingly sought and that has been invited by the film’s sociopaths.
One issue Funny Games raises is usually overlooked and that is the question to what extent it is possible to live on after having witnessed such extreme violence and torture having been unleashed on someone we love. After their son has been shot and after the father has fully broken down in front of his wife and in front of us, their looks tell us that to resume life after this is an impossibility. As such the end is both inevitable and fitting. I still wonder what American audiences will make of this film and I also wonder whether Haneke will have had the guts to really fashion a shoot by shoot remake. I remember the urge to leave the theatre when I first saw it, and I wonder what a wider audience will learn about the lust for violence in our society. [added: because it is such a deeply European movie, and it should also be remembered that the director is Austrian. To my mind, it also deals with how a civilized Europe succumbed to the funny games of totalitarian regimes not so long ago.]
