Fritz here....I've been working on a mammoth post about the end of The Wire but can't come to finish it, so...
2008 is still young, but it's hard to imagine there'll be a film this year that I'll hate more than Funny Games.
Directed by Michael Haneke (Cache), it tells the story of a married couple and their young son who travel to their country vacation home. Once there, they find themselves terrorized by two Leopold & Loeb clones (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet). Torture (of both the physical and psychological variety) ensues.
What's so infuriating about Funny Games is its unbelievable smugness. Haneke thinks he's making a grand artistic statement about voyeurism and violence in movies and how moviegoers are complicit in that violence (Pitt makes roughly 2 or 3 asides to the audiences where he asks them what they think before contiuing his torture of the family). In reality, all Haneke has done has made the most smug, self-satisfied horror film in the history of cinema.
Funny Games revels in the behavior it claims to be superior to. Say what you will about grade-Z horror films like the Friday the 13th films, but at least they're honest about what they are. Those films know they're sleazy, gory, exploitative films that treat human beings like objects. Funny Games is sleazy, gory, and exploitative (you get to watch a bound Watts writhe around in her underwear for several minutes), but it's also dishonest to the point of loathsomeness. It acts as if it's superior to other horror films and the audiences who watch them, but it's not. And if you tell an artsy-farty defender of the film that you hated it, they'll give you some line about how it's supposed to infuriate the bourgeoisie, challenge your perceptions of violence, blah blah.
I'm not sure if a meta exercise in deconstructing audience participation in on-screen violence would work in any circumstance, but for it to work it has to be introduced earlier. Haneke only uses the aside device two or three times in the movie, which makes it seem like an astonishingly halfhearted attempt to justify the film's sleaziness. If you want an example of a movie that breaks the fourth wall and interacts with its audience while deconstructing a major genre, see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (which satirized old-school detective films).
In the end, Funny Games is just torture porn for pretentious people.
1 comments:
Hey, Fritz. Thanks for the comment: I also like your blog.
While I disagree with the main point of your review, I do agree with some of the things you have to say. Honestly, this is my favorite line:
"And if you tell an artsy-farty defender of the film that you hated it, they'll give you some line about how it's supposed to infuriate the bourgeoisie, challenge your perceptions of violence, blah blah."
I assume since the title is "Movie Guys," you write it with someone else -- Dave?
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