Funny Games

Michael Haneke - 1997
This, probably, is formally not as interesting as the two Haneke I have seen before, 'Hidden' and 'The White Ribbon', at least on the level of the camera and so on. We have a lot of close-ups, with, compared to say 'Hidden', a pretty quick cut rate. The film is shot so that the inside is pretty dark, but not excessively so. There are signs of what Haneke will later develop, most noticeably in the pretty audacious huge lonbg take after the two boys leave for the first time; the long, long duration of the mother and father stumbling, unbroken for a good few minutes; this is pretty harrowing duration, which I remember well from 'Hidden'. As is famous, the violence is pretty much entirely offscreen.
The structure of this film is really a focus on the bourgeois family; our interrupters seem almost a formal point of divine violence. Haneke seems almost more interest in what happens after; perhaps due to discomfort showing the violence. This discomfort is most obvious when we are turned to and, three times if I remember, asked to confront the fact we are really taking quite a relish in the violence. This is way ahead of most films, but at the same time I felt a touch underdeveloped; Haneke seems more uncomfortable in a vague way with us seeing violence, but still chooses not to exise it.
We are asked what side we are on, and we have to ask what is really going on here? Is this a youth in revolt film? Destruction of the bourgeois? Anatomy of screen violence? All of the above. As in 'Hidden', there is an element here where I feel Haneke is taking us through a formal exercise, making his points like that, rather than investigating the image. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating investigation and, yes, riveting to watch.