Funny Games

Funny Games (1997) is about two young men taking a family hostage at their lake house, and its actual target is the audience. Georg, Anna and their son arrive at the holiday house. Two young men in white gloves, speaking politely, knock and ask for eggs. Then they do not leave. Then they propose a bet: will the family still be alive in the morning. Haneke builds it like a thriller and removes every instrument a thriller uses. The violence is almost never shown; the camera looks elsewhere while it happens and you hear it. Every moment that offers hope of escape is deliberately dismantled. Twice one of them turns to the camera and speaks to the audience. At one point he picks up a remote and rewinds the film, undoing something that happened. The film is telling you: you chose to watch this, and I decide the outcome. Haneke said it was made for an audience that consumes violence as entertainment. There were walkouts when it screened at Cannes. In 2007 Haneke remade it in English, shot for shot. His reason: the film had been conceived for an American audience in the first place and the original had not reached them. There is almost no music; the single exception at the opening is deliberately aggressive. It runs 108 minutes. Good for: films that think about cinema, Haneke, and formal experiment. Less good for: it was made to punish the viewer; the violence is audible and it is very hard to sit through.