Film Review

Funny Games

words by Todd Gilchrist

According to a line of film dialogue that doubles as ad copy for Michael Haneke's Funny Games, "it's easier when things are polite." In the case of Haneke's remake of his 1997 film of the same name, the line refers to the unfailingly even-tempered way in which two sadistic young men torture an affluent suburban family, but it could just as easily exemplify the filmmaker's dearth of technical challenges. For a brutal horror film, there is almost no on-screen violence. In any case, "easier" will never be a word used to describe Michael Haneke's home-invasion piece because it replaces its lack of gore with even more disturbing emotional intensity; and in the process it deconstructs genre conventions as it exploits them to a devastating effect.
The film follows a husband (Tim Roth), wife (Naomi Watts) and son (Devon Gearhart) who play unfortunate hosts to a pair of young men (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) who tie them up and subject them to a series of sadistic games. As Haneke quickly reveals, typical character-building details (even names) aren't terribly important aside from a mocking justification of their actions provided to their victims. The two boys refer to one another by different pseudonyms throughout the film, and never reveal even a hint of why they're doing what they're doing. But much like in his previous film Cache, Haneke finds his thesis in this absence of explanation and exploitation of perspective while dismantling typical depictions of violence and the structures of storytelling that allow audiences casual detachment from the depravity that takes place on screen.

In other words, this is essentially thinking man's torture porn, the stuff of Saw and The Hills Have Eyes; these are films that have been elevated from visceral to conceptual levels. Haneke even chooses music that resembles (by way of John Zorn) the obnoxious sludge-metal that filmmakers frequently use to score these blood-stained opuses. The film is a critique of the medium itself, based in the palpable reality of the victims' lives but lacquered with the cinematic flourishes of their torturers' self-awareness. Watts, Roth, and Gearhart never blink for a second at the horrors to which they're subjected, forcing us to share in their fear and pain, while Pitt and Corbet subvert expectations by offering asides to their movie-going audience and then later denying them the gratification of a much-needed comeuppance.

Suffice it to say this isn't the feel-good fright flick of the year and much less "fun" in the way that we might embrace a slasher movie for its stupidly predictable twists and turns. Haneke has a point of putting the screws to his characters, and by extension to the viewer as well. This means that gore hounds who rush to see it will be disappointed by its lack of violence while more thoughtful ticket-buyers will likely avoid it as they have its superficial predecessors, in the process missing out on Funny Games' considerable depths. But Haneke has made a great (daresay important) movie, as much for its intent as for its inevitable impact, which means that whether it's polite or rude, easy or tough, with regard to you or the characters or filmmaking in general, Funny Games is undeniably rewarding - even if it's not always enjoyable.