playing and fooling around with the viewers >expectation of a (violent) film. The treatment >of violence is a new one i think,
But Funny Games actually is a violent film: nearly everybody who appears on-screen dies from violence. Much of this violence takes place offscreen but despite claims in many reviews there's a good amount explicitly shown onscreen. Offscreen portrayal of violence is of course nothing new but what Haenke did was make viewers aware of his choice *as a choice*. Fritz Lang for instance often chose to have violence offscreen as have numerous other directors but they aren't given credit for that. In fact much of the violence in Reservoir Dogs occurs offscreen; it's the effects that are thrown in our faces. Funny Games seems to me a dishonest film because it's basically a genre film (there were piles of these home invasion/terrorized bourgeois films made in Europe during the 70s) that tries to justify itself with "good for you" tricks like the use of offscreen space and characters addressing the audience. Same thing with many mondo documentaries that claim to be objective or eve! n critical but in fact are just excuses to show all sorts of weird things.