Funny Games (1997)
Directed by Michael Haneke
Writing credits Michael Haneke
Susanne Lothar.... Anna
Ulrich Mühe.... Georg
Arno Frisch.... Paul
Frank Giering.... Peter
It's so great watching movies that have complete contempt for their audience. They must have said, "Hey, let's make a violent movie and show the audience how much we think they're stupid." There is a story about two guys attacking a family
but I think they were sent by the filmmakers in an attempt to wink, (sometimes literally), at the audience to let us know that they despise us for liking blood and violence.
The one scene at the end sums it up nicely. Another "funny game" is being played
and the wife lunges for the shotgun. She blasts the fat attacker away only to have the skinny attacker hit the remote control and rewind the movie so the fat one can live again. See, it's all fake! Don't you want a movie to remind you of that? How dare you enjoy the violence movies sell? This movie is constantly biting the hand that feeds it and it gets very tiresome.
Incidently, that was a great shotgun blast scene. I rewound it myself to see it again. I had to get some fun out of the movie.
SCORE: 1.5 out of 4 fake killers in a fake movie
Nice to see someone else not bowing down at the altar of Haneke. I really despised Funny Games too.
ReplyDeleteYeah, my thoughts exactly. Pretentious, condescending crap. If anything, Haneke just showed us that he doesn't understand much of anything about the society he's trying to comment on.
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell are you on about?
ReplyDeleteHey! Why don't you disregard the moral messages of the film and the exploration of a violence-numbed audience and simply watch this film on level one - entertainment!
You can't say it's a bad film due to the technical aspects and the suspense/tension created in each scene. The acting was brilliant to top it all off.
Nobody says every viewer will get it on a deeper level yet the film still stands strong as a superbly-crafted suspense thriller.