Funny Games

Sadist or satirist? Austrian director Michael Haneke is successful as both--for the most part. He wrote and directed the original Austrian Funny Games in 1997 and the remake in 2007. Surely the few other people in America who saw it have been just as traumatized as I was. Presumably, Haneke decided he really doesn't like Americans, so he came at all of us with a remake full of well-known names that more viewers would be willing to watch. Everyone knows Americans aren't too keen on reading in their movies. The two versions are almost exactly the same. Seriously, his new one is shot-for-shot the same.

The plot is fairly simple: two nice young men (dressed ominously similar to the droogs in A Clockwork Orange) show up at a family's lake house to ask for some eggs. Turns out they aren't so nice, and they go to work torturing the family seemingly just for the fun of it. Most of the torture is not physical, though, and very little of the physical violence makes it on screen. Haneke is great at evoking horror from the reactions of other family members. Their terror is reflected in us. It is a principle David Fincher used very well in the “Angel Face reconstruction” scene of Fight Club. His first edit of that scene had more punching and destruction on screen, but the final version felt much more graphic because we see how the rest of the crowd is affected by the massacre. There is an interesting discussion about this on one of the commentary tracks of the Fight Club DVD.

But this isn't your run of the mill horror thriller. As I said, we don't see most of the blood and gore that sells the Saw and Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies. What's really interesting is that Haneke's point seems to be to draw us in with his charismatic lead intruder, who routinely breaks the fourth wall. In this way, we have another glimpse of Alex from A Clockwork Orange. His nods and winks implicate us in the carnage as voyeurs. We lean in and maybe even nervously laugh at his milder comments and actions. This makes the damage he inflicts even more powerful. David Cronenberg did the same thing (though more effectively) in my favorite film of 2005, A History of Violence. Cronenberg excited us with the action and violence, and he showed us that his characters felt the same way. Then we saw the underbelly, the true consequences of violence.

So if you only want to squirm through the length of one film, which version should you see? That's a tough choice. Perhaps it's easier to watch without having to read subtitles. Maybe you want to see the recognizable faces of the American version. You could just want to see the original for the fact that it came first. My vote is for the original. But I may be biased because I saw it first (more shocking) and alone (no assholes cheering at the theater). The new one comes off as sleeker and more glossy because of the Hollywood faces. Tim Roth and Naomi Watts are both incapable of bad performances, and Michael Pitt is one of our best young up and coming actors.

Bottom line: See at least one of these. You will be shocked and will probably (hopefully?) feel a little guilty by the end.