There's a lot of things that could be addressed in this remake of Funny Games. It is a shot-for-shot remake, more or less, of the original. Even more so than Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot Psycho remake. It is particularly odd because the director is remaking his own film in this case, simply replacing actors and languages. Many might ask Why? And I say Why Not? What's the point? Maybe there isn't one. Maybe, there is. Maybe it's a non-issue.

Like the two villains in the picture who completely separate the gruesome murders they've just performed from the philosophical discussion they have at the end of the film about the distinction between physical reality and anti-physical reality, it is my contention that the point of this remake is simultaneously profound but ultimately a discussion that has nothing to do with the actual work itself.

What interests me in Funny Games, particularly this remake, is the partnership Haneke seeks to establish with his audience. Haneke expects his viewers to take part and intellectually participate in the cinematic experience, rather than sit back and mentally check out. Funny Games is not escapism, it is decidedly the opposite. It is provocation on a level seen rarely in the movie world - perhaps in the films of Stanley Kubrick or Jean-Luc Godard or Brian DePalma. Even Tarantino. But few others. Provocation may be a misleading term, however, when it is actually the heightening of awareness these directors seek. They respect the audience enough to include them in the process. These guys hope to include rather than exclude the viewer.

In an effort to accomplish this partnership Funny Games is self-conscious to a maddening degree. From the opening shots that recall the opening of Kubrick's The Shining, the soundtrack alternates between classical orchestrations and the most overwhelming death metal. Even before that, the opening credits play small red text over a solid black screen, to no music, for what seems an eternity, the silence of the theater is so profound, and those watching the film fall into a sort of reverential silence, comparable only to the moment when one enters a museum, or the beats before a conductor raises his arms before his orchestra. People stop eating popcorn. They put away their snacks. They stop moving lest the chair squeaks or their clothes rustle.

Relating the story of a family of three (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and young Devon Gearhart) arriving at their seaside vacation home only to be summarily taken hostage in their own space by a couple of thugs who look like they stepped out of a Brett Easton Ellis novel, Haneke makes powerful use of long-takes and precise framing to inject the picture with inescapable tension. It doesn't hurt that the young thugs (Brady Corbet as Peter and Michael Pitt as Paul) look like the rebellious youth of another Kurbick film: A Clockwork Orange. Dressed in all white golf attire, they recall the droogs in a not-so-subtle nod to one of cinemas most treasured meditations on violence.

Going in, I was not aware Darius Khondji shot this, and when his name appeared on screen I let out a little, "Yes!", knowing the pic would be photographed flawlessly. Working with such cinematic giants as Jean Pierre Jeunet and David Fincher, Khondji is a master in his own right, particularly adept at exploiting monochromatic color schemes in single locations as he did in Jeunet's Delicatessen and Fincher's Panic Room.

Posted in Moviegasm by Damien Belliveau at 1:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Last Comment: blondie78757@yahoo.com on Mar 28, 2008 08:34 AM.