71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance

Vienna, between October and December 1993. The film shows pieces from the lives of people who do not know each other: a Romanian boy living by begging, a devout security guard at a bank, an old man alone in his flat, a couple trying to adopt and a strained university student. How these lives intersect is something the film shows only at the end. Michael Haneke wrote and directed. The title describes the form: the film is made of 71 separate fragments divided by black pauses. Real news broadcasts of the period are placed between them, with the global conflicts of the 1990s running across the screen. The method puts deliberate distance between the viewer and the events. That is the subject as well: that violence on a screen or in your own neighbourhood does not change how detached people stay. Haneke counts it as the last part of his trilogy, after The Seventh Continent in 1989 and Benny's Video in 1992. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 67 percent from 6 reviews and Metacritic at 71 from 8. One assessment called it one of the most challenging narrative works of the 1990s. Who it is for: viewers who like cinema that thinks through form and Haneke's cold method. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to attach to a character. The film introduces nobody and will not let you grieve for anyone. The closing contains a sudden and severe act of gun violence.