The seventh continent
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The seventh continent |
| Country of production | Austria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1989 |
| length | 104 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Michael Haneke |
| script | Michael Haneke |
| production |
Wega Film , Veit Heiduschka |
| music | Alban Berg |
| camera | Toni Peschke |
| cut | Marie Homolkova |
| occupation | |
| |
The Seventh Continent is a film by director Michael Haneke , which premiered on May 20, 1989 at the Cannes Film Festival. It is Haneke's first feature film, which was also released as part of the edition Der Österreichische Film .
Content and plot
Georg is a technician in an anonymous, unspecified company, his wife Anna and her brother Alexander run a specialist optics store, daughter Eva attends compulsory school. The family is surrounded by an urban bourgeois environment, shaped by everyday routine. The core theme of the film is to thematize feelings of nervousness, emptiness and isolation of people in a western affluent society. At some point the family decides to destroy their livelihoods and themselves.
The film is divided into three sections, each representing one year. The first two parts show an exemplary day with its very ordinary actions: 1987 and 1988. The only external communication that goes beyond ordinary social interaction with other people is letters to Georg's parents, written by Anna and can be read by a voiced voice in the film. These letters convey professional successes in a lifeless, upscale phrase-like eloquence and are dramaturgically placed in front of Georg's everyday work in the model days of 1987 and 1988. Most of the content consists almost entirely of everyday actions. There is a focus on things and movement patterns, people themselves do not play a special role.
At the beginning of the third section, the family drives home from a visit to Georg's parents. This time Georg writes a letter himself, explaining in sober words that he and Anna made the decision to break up the tents. A cleanup and isolation takes place from the outside world: The newspaper subscription is canceled, Georg quits his job, Anna leaves the optics shop, investments and bank account are canceled and the car is sold (but not without having been cleaned in the car wash beforehand). The last scheduled contact with the environment is an extensive delivery of ordered food and beverages by a party service. In the case of a telephone connection, the receiver is picked up after an unsolicited call in order to exclude availability.
The next morning Georg begins to systematically destroy the entire inventory of the house, at the same time Anna takes on her role as a housewife and prepares breakfast. After the unexpected visit of the troubleshooting service of the post and telegraph administration, the telephone receiver is put down again, but the ringing mechanism is prevented with a wad of paper, and the same procedure is used when the doorbell rings. After this unwanted interruption, all cash in the household is torn with bare hands and flushed down the toilet. After spending an evening together in front of the television set, the fatal poisoning occurs the following night with a successively accumulated amount of the drug called Noctenal. First Eva dies, then Anna, and the last Georg, who writes the names with the date and time of death on a wall. That letter to his parents is carefully glued to the inside of the front door.
After the end of the film there is a text according to which Georg's parents refused to believe the suicide testimony and asked the police to investigate them because they suspected murder. The case remained unsolved.
analysis
The title The Seventh Continent is a symbol for an imaginary place of isolation that the family longs for. For the symbolic symbol there is a sandy sea beach with waves and a rock formation on the other side, whereby a contradiction between rocks and waves arises purely from the laws of nature. The longing picture of this place appears in the first two sections, as well as Georg's last picture; at the same time it is also the last moving image in the film itself.
In an interview included on the DVD, the director and screenwriter Michael Haneke explains that he was inspired for this film by a newspaper report that a family committed suicide in a similar manner.
Important themes of this film appear in Haneke's later films in different variations. The seventh continent is the first part of the trilogy about the emotional glaciation of the post-industrial consumer society. Benny's video forms the second part , the third 71 fragments of a chronology of chance .
Awards
- 1989: Bronze Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival