Funny Games (Review + Background Buzz)

Did you ever have one of those “a-ha!” moments when watching a movie? You know, the kind where you’re utterly baffled as to what you’re watching until one solitary element of the film—be it a line of dialogue, a camera setup, or a soundtrack—acts as the keystone that suddenly makes all the jagged edges fit into one complete mosaic? Sometimes these moments are blatant and a necessary plot device for the story and sometimes they’re subtle nuances that are easily overlooked but they are always necessary to unlock the filmmaker’s vision. I’ll admit that for a significant chunk of this film I was baffled, clueless, searching for whatever it was that a proven director like Michael Haneke was trying to express in this gallery of grotesqueries. Eventually though, that “a-ha” moment hit, that bolt of lightning struck my brain and I’m glad it did because without it, I could’ve written off a truly great film in Funny Games.

In this horror thriller, we find a married couple, Anna and George (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth), on vacation in Long Island with their young son, Georgie (Devon Gearheart). They’re soon greeted by two youths, Peter (Brady Corbert) and Paul (Michael Pitt) who claim to be helping out the neighbors and whose soft-spoken requests of the family seem harmless at first: they’d like to borrow some eggs, try out the golf clubs, etc. But Anna gets aggravated after Peter accidentally breaks too many eggs and demands that the boys leave. They refuse. It’s after George intervenes forcefully that the boys physically strike and take the family captive in their own home. Shaken and scared, the family bears witness to Paul’s sadistic invitation to violence—he bets they won’t survive the night and they have to bet they will. With only twelve hours until sun up, the macabre begins.

The uneducated would categorize this film as “torture porn,” another mindless entry into the tapering horror sub-genre. It contains many elements seen in films categorized as such, including unmotivated killers, intentional acts of physical torture, even implied violence towards a child. Despite all that, it just never feels quite right labeling it as shallow—it’s beautifully shot, there’s a genuine familial bond, none of the violence is ever shown on screen, and Paul frequently breaks the fourth wall by addressing the audience. To top it all off, Paul is one of the most bone-chillingly remorseless yet hilariously likeable villian since Mr. Blonde. What does Haneke want with us? It’s when Anna asks this same question of Peter that the answer, and the “a-ha” moment, is revealed: “you shouldn’t forget the importance of entertainment.” With such a simple line, we see insight into the director’s mind and the film transforms from mindless torture to clever mockery. He isn’t torturing the family and the audience for the sake of torture, but for the sake of showing us how preposterous it is to assume that such films are accepted under the guise of entertainment, and every single aspect of the film exists to support this commentary. As if to ultimately confirm that this is not the story you expected to see, Haneke even goes so far as to give the audience the ending they want, then quickly take it away through an act of narrative impossibility. Every single step that Peter and Paul take in this film are individual grains of sand in the mirror that Funny Games holds up to us, the audience. As debates rage on over what’s acceptable or too explicit to be shown on the big screen, Haneke takes the time to remind us of the guise under which these unnecessary exercises in exploitation are allowed to commence. Many can argue that the Saws and the Hostels carry their own social commentaries, but Haneke has shown how a skilled filmmaker can craft the macabre, how to use the torture for his own devices and has produced a film not to be missed.

Background Buzz
A round up of related content from across the web including fan blogs, podcasts, analysis, news, magazines, and more.

-NY Times Interview with writer/director Michael Haneke about the U.S. remake

-Official film website

-Interviews with both killers Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet

-Red carpet video interview with Naomi Watts

-Some aggregated scathing reviews to compare and contrast