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Funny Games is also a film that takes place primarily in one locale, and is dominated by a single color, in this case white. Everything is white. The family's sport of choice is golf, and white golf balls show up throughout the film. The presumptive reason the intruders first enter the home of Watts and Roth is for white eggs. The walls of the house's interior are white, with white moldings, where white frames hold white pictures. And this is ultimately a film about white on white crime, the children of the bourgeoisie exacting extreme, emotionless pain and suffering on the generation that preceded them. It is no surprise that when Peter and Paul force Watts' Ann to spend a portion of the film in her underwear that her bra is skin-colored and her panties are of the whitest white.
Funny Games is ultimately a picture about viewership, about the unannounced pact that is made between the author of a work and his audience. To be clear, it is not a movie about voyeurism. On the contrary, Haneke doesn't want to spy on his characters or have the audience spy on them. Actually it seems like he aims to present his characters as complicit in their situation. It is about eliciting a response, each party taking responsibility.
More than a few critics have attacked the film for being exploitive, for being nothing more than torture porn, in the same vein as Saw or Hostel, merely wrapping its exploits in philosophical pretenses and hiding behind its superficial intellectualism. I see just the opposite. I get the feeling Haneke knows - just as Tarantino has argued and Peckinpah made clear and Hitchcock became famous for - that violence is in fact an important part of cinema. Not because the acts of violence themselves are justifiable in real life, but because violence is itself cinematic and not only justifiable but welcome on screen.
If violence is cinematic, and a work of cinema is disturbing to an audience, then that work is ultimately effective. Following this logic, Funny Games is most probably a masterpiece, for very few films have successfully inspired in its viewers such anxiety and discomfort. If you're looking for other examples track down Gasper Noe's Irreversible.
Comments (4)
Great read!
Can't wait to see this film...from the first time I saw the preview a couple of months ago, I was immediately was fascinated by it...I'm sure another Naomi Watts film also had something to do with it.
Do you think I should rent the original first - or does it matter?
1 of 4 | Posted by moasey | Posted on March 15, 2008 11:01 AM
I just saw this movie tonight and was BLOWN AWAY!
I went into it initially thinking I was going just to see a cool independent thriller. Not So.
This movie is SO MUCH MORE. Like many people have said in other reviews it is an EXPERIENCE, not just a movie.
Most people, normal people at least, leave the movie very disturbed. I know I was. So be prepared for that anyone who sees it.
Powerful messages lie within this very well done movie that will be stuck in your mind for a long time after viewing.
OH! and @ moasey, don't rent the original. The movie is remade shot for shot so you will have already seen the movie if you watch the original first. Go and be surprised. You'll appreciate it more. The only thing that is new in the remake are the actors.
2 of 4 | Posted by bfrank | Posted on March 15, 2008 11:36 PM
Great post! Saw this movie today--FANTASTIC. Intelligent, disturbing, well-acted by an incredible cast (which was the big draw for me initially).
Definitely not torture porn--the violence itself is rarely seen--but a very, very interesting film. I agree with previous posters--prepare to engage in a pretty horrifying experience (especially that last shot, still giving me goosebumps hours later).
This is why films are made.
3 of 4 | Posted by maybeimamazed02 | Posted on March 16, 2008 9:05 PM
I agree with Roger Ebert, who said: "...But if you liked those pictures from Abu Ghraib, you'll love "Funny Games"! See the captors tighten a pillowcase over a young boy's head, force Mom to strip (no actual nudity shown) by the TV, smash Dad's leg with a golf club and play hide and seek with the body of the family dog they've just killed with the same driver! For the price of a ticket, you can choose the level and nature of your vicarious involvement with the sadism on the screen, and the masochism in your seat. Enjoy."
Ugh.
4 of 4 | Posted by blondie78757@yahoo.com | Posted on March 28, 2008 8:34 AM