I would love to hear your thoughts on Funny Games, both the original and the remake. In a peculiar way, I feel that this conversation is only just getting started. As with any cinematic masterpiece, the film seems to remain under an interpretive cloud no matter how much you discuss it. It's inexhaustibly rich for analysis.
Also, as agreed by mostly everyone, it essentially criticises hollywood horror and thriller films, as well as its objective public. However, if I were to stay in that reading, I'd be compelled to ignore the moral element the two boys cross over, as it would situate myself on a voyeuristic seat.
I was initially drawn to the standard interpretation of the film as a finger-wagging media critique, but I have come to realize that this reading actually misses what is so exceptional about
Funny Games. If we read the film as a simple piece of moralistic agitprop, then it seems Haneke reveals himself as a hypocrite--as detractors of the film are quick to point out. As you suggest, this narrow approach to the film inevitably ignores a great deal of nuance and irony, which for Haneke's purposes are much more salient anyway.
When the movie came out many critics described it, without sufficient elaboration, as a critique of media violence. But what exactly is the point-of-view of this critique? What does Haneke say about cinematic violence? This crucial terrain seemed to be missed by superficial analyses--including my own early postings on this thread. Commentators consistently failed to adequately analyze the ethos of this supposed "critique". One of the purposes of this discussion, I suppose, was to explore potential meanings of the film and what exactly viewers should take from the experience in light of this poverty of analysis. As a fan of the movie, I was hostile to the detractors who labelled the film as heavy handed and condescending. I wanted to respond to these objections, but how should I have expected people to react to such sanctimonious readings of the film? "It confronts you with your own hypocrisy as a passive consumer of conventional Hollywood thrillers." No, this reading is way too simplistic. In retrospect, I came to realize that the moralistic ethos many took offense to wasn't actually coming from the film itself. It was being imposed by overzealous admirers of the film (myself included) who were insisting that people's visceral reactions to the infamous remote scene (reactions deliberately generated by Haneke) were wrong or somehow morally objectionable... It's no wonder so many potential admirers felt cheated. In this way, I feel many admirers of the film have missed the point and have done a disservice to Haneke's artistry by insisting upon a narrow moralistic reading of
Funny Games. I've subsequently revised my original position in light of this epiphany.
My current position is that the primary agenda of the film is to shake its audience out of complacency--but not in the sense I initially supposed. Media violence does not produce more violence. On the contrary, it creates a disturbing ambivalence to violence. With
Funny Games, Haneke masterfully manipulates his audience's emotions with Hitchcockian deftness. He creates an authentic experience of violence: utter helplessness and disorientation. His primary strategy to this end is to ironically subvert our faith in technology. There is a persistent motif of technology
hindering the family's escape in this film. For example, the phone is useless to call the police; the security gate traps the young son who is too small to scale it; guns do not go off when they are most needed; a remote ironically frustrates audience expectation. It's maddening! But I believe Haneke is suggesting that the convenience and comfort which technology affords ironically serves to undermine our capacity for survival in extreme circumstances. After all, violence is sometimes
necessary for survival, as this film demonstrates. Technology--including media--has "softened" society so to speak, and makes us vulnerable in unexpected ways.
Funny Games taps into a primal fear that the technology we are so dependent upon can betray us at crucial moments.
Have you watched the remake? Do you think there are conceptual differences between both? Most people say that Haneke remade Funny Games to appeal to the US audience in order to make his message spread from the roots of its conception, I feel there's more to it since both films have some subtle but significant differences.
I have seen the remake, and my impression is that it is inferior to the original. The stark white visual style of
Funny Games U.S. is appropriate since that film is humorless and grim compared to the original. This is surprising since it's a frame-by-frame remake. It just lacks the energy and vitality of the '97 version. I also feel that the remake lacks the incongruous dark comedy element which made the original so daring and radical. In the original, this perverse humorous aspect gave the film an additional dimension and prevented it from descending into stark moralism. Without this element, the remake seemed brutal and poorly executed. A great deal of substance was lost in translation.
I also feel that the subtext of class which animates the original film falls completely flat in the remake. I am inclined to suppose that populist American audiences are much less sensitive to class than their more hierarchical European counterparts. Speaking generally, European culture is much more rigidly formal and mannered than American culture. To illustrate my point, consider the introductory scene of both films: An upper-class family is riding in a car while listening to classical music. They collectively try to guess the composer of the piece. Suddenly, the music is drowned out by hard rock music--a sinister effect which foreshadows the fate in store for this oblivious bourgeois family. But this does not ring true in an American context. It's difficult to seriously imagine a suburban middle class American family merrily listening to classical music without vocal protests from the child. Americans simply do not appreciate classical music and high culture the way that Europeans do, and I think the juxtaposition of pleasant classical and assaultive rock music is much less shocking to an American audience than a European one.
Also, during the scene when Peter first approaches Anna for eggs, his escalating clumsy mishaps test her manners. While it is a trope of European high comedy for a foolish character to breach the rigid decorum of a dignified elite character, this seems (again) unbelievable in an American context. I just don't see an American housewife suffering such a destructive guest for the sake of
manners. But this is, after all, the essential tension underlying the scene.
Moreover, Peter and Paul seem much less sophisticated and refined in the remake. As a consequence, the villains in the remake are less shocking than in the original film. Where Arno Frisch is charming and cultured in his assaults, Michael Pitt is morose and disaffected. One of the unsettling aspects of the original was that our first impression of the villains is that they seem like good company; mischievous, playful, polite, cultured, and with an infectious (if incongruous)
joie de vivre. The charismatic magnetism of Arno Frisch, combined with his sadism, is disorienting in the original. He is a force of nature! This crucial seductive aspect of the villains is completely absent in the remake. Similarly, there is something icy and impenetrable about Naomi Watts. Her face is
too familiar, and we do not feel the progressive breaches of her decorum as deeply as with Susanne Lothar, because we implicitly feel that she is safe. Her persona is too pristine. Watts never seems to sacrifice her dignity in the process of her torment, her tears are always self-consciously "pretty." She just passively suffers--a beautiful victim. In contrast, Susanne Lothar always (realistically) seemed to be on the verge of lashing out violently, but her dignified fidelity to rigid European manners consistently (and fatally) restricts her action.
To summarize, I greatly prefer the original which is elevated by its use of irony and humor to balance the grim content. I just feel that the remake is incredibly weak in comparison. The remake functions exclusively as a horror film, nothing more. I enjoy the remake as a technical exercise, but it feels too stagy and artificial in contrast to the immediacy of the original.
And you will know my name is The Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee!
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efernandezf12
10 years ago
Thanks for the reply mate,
It's difficult to seriously imagine a suburban middle class American family merrily listening to classical music without vocal protests from the child. Americans simply do not appreciate classical music and high culture the way that Europeans do, and I think the juxtaposition of pleasant classical and assaultive rock music is much less shocking to an American audience than a European one.
In the original it feels natural to view that european upper-class family enjoying classical music, it feels just way out of tone in the remake. Also, they seem much more middle-class in the american version, and not so much of a higher stratum. Maybe that's my perception because of what I'm accustomed to get from a stereotype play- the kind that Haneke introduces frequently. I must concur with you on that matter.
I must add, mostly as a remark on Haneke's cleverness, the scene when Georg asks Anne to call the police. In the austrian film she doesn't know the number, in fact it feels normal that she ignores it completely. Of course, in the american one she immediately phones 911. Again, cultural adaptation falls into place.
I also prefer the original one, characters seem less cold and dark. As you say, it seems that they're constantly trying to settle in some sort of Stockholm syndrome, and more than once I felt myself sliding into their game. Whenever that happened, something violent occurred and snapped me out of it. To be honest, Michael Pitt seemed like a spoiled, arrogant brat; while Arno played the charming psychopath which makes the film infinitely more immersive, and interesting.
To continue with the family chatter, the austrians still have the rough outline of a patriarcal family hierarchy; on the other hand, the american ones coincide with the equal mother/father figure. To prove that point we should pay attention to the stripping scene. Ulrich Muhe plays the head-of-family dad, when
his woman gets naked he is also being humiliated, that could be the reason why he can't hold his head up any longer. You know the rest of the story with Tim Roth's interpretation of that scene (I think this might've been pointed out somewhere in this forum).
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RaidenPLS
10 years ago
You've offered some great insights on the differences between the original and the remake. I can't believe I didn't mention the 9-1-1 issue! That definitely threw a wrench in the crucial scene where Anna tries to call the police.
The original film, I believe, operates essentially as a perverse comedy of manners--like a satirical Bunuel film played for horror instead of laughs. The fulcrum of the drama is rigid European manners. Consider the scene at the dock where Anna maintains dignified and genial composure rather than hysterically screaming out for help. Whatever her motive, she opts for composure and dignity rather than compromising her bourgeois principles and thereby fails to save her family. Also, during the excruciating long-take after little Georg is shot we finally see Anna and Georg definitively confronted with the existential truth of the cruel indifference of the universe. There is no persuasive appeal to justice, morality or good manners that will spare this family from their mortality! Up until this point, they have remained insulated from the reality of death by the fragile veneer of civilization. They believed, incorrectly, that if they played by the rules, they would escape their ordeal. Their stubborn fidelity to manners in spite of their circumstances is rooted upon their misguided faith that the universe is ultimately just. It is no coincidence that the spectacular long take which shows Anna and Georg passing through the stages of grief culminates in a scene of the couple pathetically blow-drying a phone(!). Confronted with the full horror of their situation, Anna and Georg STILL cling to a false hope that civilization (and technology) will save them from their inescapable fate. The authorities are too far away to help them and yet the couple still seeks an improbable salvation. Their pleas fall upon deaf ears. God IS dead in Haneke's universe. I've come to the conclusion that this film isn't so much a "media critique" per se as a wholesale assault upon our modern faith in technology--and more broadly, our faith in civilization, progress, and the fundamental goodness of people. If the film has an ethos at all, I think it could be characterized as tragic fatalism.
Conceptually, the entire film is predicated on the conflict between moral civilized behavior and the amoral survival instinct. How much will it take for these characters to reach the breaking point and breach their good manners for the sake of survival? This is the core dramatic tension underlying the original, but (for better or worse) Americans do not place such a high premium on cultural refinement. So the remake crucially misses its target in this respect. I regard the remake as Haneke's single miscalculation in an otherwise impeccable filmography.
And you will know my name is The Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee!
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boilers2014
10 years ago
I'm sorry. I really enjoyed reading your posts until you started mentioning that Americans do not appreciate classical music as much as Europeans do. While that might be true, you have no evidence to prove that not even ONE American family appreciates classical music. I'm not an American, but this seems like a bigoted response from an otherwise educated individual.
Also, you don't see an American housewife suffering such a destructive guest for the sake of manners? Are all Americans manner-less, in your opinion? That seems a bit far fetched, don't you think?
I saw the remake with some of my American friends and they totally understood the film and appreciated the context and commentary. You're totally wrong about your "view" of Americans.
The truth is, SOME Americans like classical music just like SOME Europeans enjoy classical music. SOME Americans have manners just like SOME Europeans have manners.
But overall, I definitely prefer the original. I loved Tim Roth in the remake, though.
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RaidenPLS
10 years ago
Fair points, both--but I feel you're misrepresenting my earlier statements. Regarding the first point, I was talking primarily about the resonance of the juxtaposition between classical music and heavy metal for general American audiences relative to their European counterparts. As an American who listens to classical music in the car, the scenario itself is not a problem to me. Nevertheless, the cultural prestige of classical music isn't as deep for American audiences as European ones, since the latter have a long historical tradition of classical music as a meaningful symbol of refinement, crucially attached to a sense of cultural pride. The impact of classical music on the American imagination has simply never been as profound (or as linked to cultural pride). Therefore, the classical music being drowned out by heavy metal would likely not have the same impact in an American context, for an American audience. I'm not sure why this would strike you as a controversial point. What is iconoclastic in a European context is not necessarily so in an American context, for specific reasons. Drowning out classical music with rock music is properly understood as a cultural assault among European audiences. I seriously doubt that the impact is as significant for American audiences.
While I would still defend my initial point, I was perhaps being hasty regarding the plausibility of an American child quietly listening to classical music (and *guessing* the composer) during an extended car ride. But for the record, plausibility is not that important to me since I read the film as a satirical comedy of manners, not a slice of cinematic realism.
Also, you don't see an American housewife suffering such a destructive guest for the sake of manners? Are all Americans manner-less, in your opinion? That seems a bit far fetched, don't you think?
If you'll note, the point I was making here was based on the tradition of European high comedy, a satirical tradition which has no comparably prominent counterpart in America (where issues of class--and manners--are not as culturally emphasized). To say that the cultural emphasis on manners is not as deep in an American context is NOT the same as claiming that Americans are manner-less--that would be a false dichotomy. Bourgeois cultural protocols governing manners are much more deeply entrenched in Europe than in America simply because, historically-speaking, the traditions have been around longer in Europe. Considering that the primary tension of the film is between manners and survival, it is no surprise American audiences are more inclined to wonder why the family didn't put up more of a fight--concerns which have been frequently raised on this message board. I *suspect* that the reason for this persistent criticism is that the prestige of bourgeois propriety is much less important for Americans.
Anyway, my speculations were an attempt to explain a specific trend I notice in the negative reception of
Funny Games between European audiences and American ones: The former tend to criticize the intensity of the violence, whereas the latter tend to criticize the believability of the scenario. To me, this critical discrepancy is revealing. How would you explain this discrepancy?
And you will know my name is The Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee!
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