Funny games

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Movie
Original title Funny games
Country of production Austria
original language German
Publishing year 1997
length 104 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Michael Haneke
script Michael Haneke
production Veit Heiduschka
music Georg Friedrich Händel ,
Pietro Mascagni ,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ,
John Zorn
camera Jürgen Juerges
cut Andreas Prochaska
occupation

Funny Games is an Austrian film drama directed by Michael Haneke from 1997 with Ulrich Mühe and Susanne Lothar in the leading roles.

The holiday idyll of a family of three is suddenly destroyed by the appearance of two young men.

The genre assignments and headings vary with the reading and attitude of the reviewers. Thus Funny Games both as a media reflection, as a scandalous film , but referred or experimental design, on the other hand as a horror movie as a thriller.

action

The married couple Anna and Georg move into their holiday home on the lake with their son Schorschi. Shortly after their arrival, shy Peter appears at their door, who asks for a few eggs on behalf of the neighbors. While he is harassing Anna, his companion Paul kills the family dog. The arriving George is knocked down while trying to compliment the intruders out. When friends Gerda and Fred come by in their boat, Paul makes sure that Anna sends them away again without arousing suspicion. Paul and Peter torture and humiliate their prisoners. Schorschi manages to escape to the neighboring house, where he comes across the corpse of the neighboring daughter. Paul takes the boy and takes him back to his parents' house, where Peter shoots him. The two young men leave the house. Anna tries to get help but is picked up by her captors and taken back to the house. They shoot Georg and take Anna, bound and gagged, onto the couple's sailing boat. On the way to the other bank they throw Anna overboard and let her drown. They continue to Gerda and Fred's house, where Paul politely asks for a few eggs ...

structure

The action, which at first glance appears to be very linear, is repeatedly broken by addressing the viewer directly. It happens several times in the film that one of the psychopaths looks at the camera with a grin and winks at the viewer in particularly macabre scenes (for example the wife is asked to look for the dead dog). In addition, when the first victim is announced, the viewer is confronted with a questioning look into the camera and the sentence “You also want to know what happens next, right?”. Later, Anna manages to shoot one of the two psychopaths. Then the other unceremoniously rewinds the film to undo this. In addition, there is the exaggerated polite behavior of the two villains, which is in stark contrast to their actions. One of the two is even outraged about the violence of today's young people, while the other just shakes his head in disbelief and apparently concerned.

The director Michael Haneke explained his approach in the press booklet for Funny Games : "I'm trying to find ways to present violence as what it always is, as not consumable ...". Haneke's aim was to create a radical, nihilistic alternative to the easily digestible but omnipresent violence of television and mainstream cinema. With his drastic, laconic style and the almost banal depiction of violence, Haneke wants to emphasize the suffering of the victims.

background

Funny Games was shown for the first time in May 1997 at the Cannes International Film Festival and was shown in German cinemas on September 11, 1997.

criticism

Funny Games polarized audiences and critics at its premiere in Cannes. Haneke's French colleague Jacques Rivette described the film as "shame" and "worse than clockwork orange ".

The verdict in the Anglo-American press fluctuated between "hardly credible and extremely unpleasant" ( Leonard Maltin ) and "brilliant, radical, provocative" ( Time Out Film Guide ). Ed Gonzalez wrote in Slant Magazine : "Haneke's complaints are only disturbing because they lack any self-criticism, and when looking at his works one always gets the impression that he believes he is superior to his characters, his audience and his study."

Claus Philipp from the Austrian Standard judged: "Haneke is right when he closely links some glorifications of violence with the current practice of the mass media - but his polemical anger, with which he intensifies atrocities, ultimately only supplies a market that is actually getting tougher, Fabric 'searches. A bit remember the controversies surrounding Funny Games to the Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone . There, too, someone pretended to deconstruct media violence. That, too, was ultimately only welcomed in a fashionable way - for heavy thinking among culturally pessimistic self-flagellants or as a show value for MTV friends. "

In Germany, the Lexicon of International Films saw a “shocking, barely tolerable media reflection which, based on the structural features of the thriller, calls into question common viewing habits and exposes the viewer as a secret accomplice of the cinematic cruelty”. Thomas Willmann criticized in artechock : “FUNNY GAMES is Michael Haneke's latest, oh-so-profound examination of the phenomenon of violence. [...] The buck [...] get passed on to the audience, who the film constantly wants to hold responsible for what it shows. That saves him having to reflect on his own fascination with the violence. "

Awards

Aftermath

In 2007 Haneke shot an American remake called Funny Games US The couple play Tim Roth and Naomi Watts .

literature

  • Günter Helmes : “On a day like any other” ... in a film like no other. Michael Hanekes Funny Games (1997) as a reflection on violence, the film and the audience. In: Visualizations of Violence. Contributions to film, theater and literature, ed. by Dagmar von Hoff, Brigitte E. Jirku and Lena Wetenkamp. Berlin: Peter Lang 2018, pp. 81–99. ISBN 978-3-631-71763-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Funny Games . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2011 (PDF; test number: 77 759 V).
  2. ^ A b c Funny Games in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  3. ↑ Thomas Assheuer, Die Zeit , accessed on November 11, 2007.
  4. ↑ Thomas Willmann, Artechock Film , accessed November 11, 2007.
  5. ↑ a b Funny Games in the Internet Movie Database .
  6. ^ Heiko Rosner, TV Spielfilm , Cinema , both accessed on November 11, 2007.
  7. ↑ Review on Spiegel.de from September 8, 1997, accessed on November 3, 2012.
  8. ↑ The Torture of the Eye: Report from the 50th Cannes Film Festival in: Die Zeit , No. 22/1997 of May 23, 1997, accessed on November 3, 2012.
  9. ↑ Interview with Jacques Rivette in Les Inrockuptibles , 1998, and on Sensesofcinema.com , 2001, accessed on November 3, 2012.
  10. ^ Leonard Maltin's 2008 Movie Guide. Signet / New American Library, New York 2007, p. 500.
  11. ^ Time Out Film Guide, Seventh Edition 1999. Penguin, London 1998, p. 326.
  12. ^ Ed Gonzalez: Funny Games. In: Slant. May 3, 2006, accessed on April 24, 2019 (English): "Haneke's admonishments are disturbing only in the sense that they're never self-critical, and while watching one of his films, there's always a sense that he thinks he's above his characters, his audience, and scrutiny. "
  13. ↑ The Standard of September 12, 1997.
  14. ^ Thomas Willmann: Funny Games. In: Artechock . Retrieved June 4, 2008 .