Funny Games

Director: Michael Haneke
Year: 1997
Country: Austria, France
Running time: 103 mins
Austria

Production co: WEGA-Film
Producer: Veit Heiduschka
Screenplay: Michael Haneke
Photography: Jürgen Jürges
Editor: Andreas Prochaska
Production designer: Christoph Kanter
Costume designer: Lisy Christl
Sound: Walter Amann
In German with English subtitles

Cast
Anna: Susanne Lothar
Jorge: Ulrich Mühe
Peter: Frank Giering
Paul: Arno Frisch
Georgie: Stefan Clapczynski
Gerda: Doris Kunstmann
Fred: Christoph Bantzer
Robert: Wolfgang Glück
Gerda's sister: Susanne Meneghel

Festivals: Cannes, Toronto, London 1997; Rotterdam, San Francisco, Sydney 1998
With this supremely creepy horror movie Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke (Benny’s Video) continues his provocative exploration of the relationship between movie violence and the real thing. The moment we see Anna, Georg and little Georgie tootling down the country road, opera blaring, they seem so absurdly cocooned in their blonde bourgeois blandness that we know we’re at the movies and that they are sitting ducks.

Their summer holiday is very soon invaded by two sinister young men in tennis whites who first arrive at the door of their lakeside cottage asking for eggs. Soon they’re back with a golf club, masking tape and surgical gloves. What follows is a day and night of terror as the two young strangers humiliate, torment and torture their “innocent” victims and the victims attempt to strike back or escape.

Showing very little actual violence, but drenching us in the fear of it, Haneke ratchets up the tension levels until we’re screaming for blood. At least, that’s what the two vile young men presume, addressing the camera in sneering conspiracy with the audience. How can we say their desire to extract the maximum pain from their victims is unmotivated when it’s what motivates this awesomely manipulative movie? If there’s anyone left out there who’s never felt degraded by the spectacle of movie violence, Funny Games is the film to test your mettle. — Bill Gosden

“I try to get the audience to feel provoked and do something against what I show them, to participate. I provide no solutions, only questions. Offering solutions is the job of politicians: who offer lies, appeasements… Take the example of ‘violence’, a central theme of our social reality. The film medium is an exceptionally effective means of exploring this theme. And in doing so cinema has turned this area into its biggest source of income: action films are worldwide the most profitable genre of the medium. However, through the consumption of such films throughout the world, aesthetics and dramatisation have resulted in legitimisation.” — Michael Haneke interviewed by Franz Grabner, Austrian Film News, 4/97