Re: Funny Games/Kenneth Anger
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.
A lot of violence was is on the screen in 'Funny Games'. He builds up hate in the viewer, by showing the two evil boys as well mannered, their speaking did a big part of the trick (their austrian accent suits this well, maybe hence the facist reference *). Not many times I saw a movie where the border between me and the film was getting frightening thin. Watching for example Reservoir Dogs you still remain in the cinema chair and the film is somewhere over there on the screen, the distance remains. But for me Michael Haneke succeeded in getting rid of that distance. But what makes it different for me is how he builds up the desire for violence towards the two boys and then starts playing with the viewer and that desire, decieving him of his genre pleasure. So it is as you say a genre film, but then he makes you aware of your expectations when you watch a violent movie, and i think he did a good job in doing so. So for me it's much more than seeing a Tarantino movie where the violence is something you payed for to watch. But I don't want to defend the movie to strongly, i did find it one of the more interesting films I saw that year, but what the heck, there where others. *) Don't wanna imply that austrian accent sounds facistical arthur
participants (2)
-
Arthur Rother -
wlt4＠mindspring.com