Funny Games

Saw Funny Games, an extremely aggressive film by Michael Haneke. The film opens on a family vacationing in some opulent, Martha's Vineyard-style boating community. Two young men drop by. They are polite and courteous but they will not leave. The young men then begin playing sadistic games with the family. This is a hard film to watch. It is a film you can trust however. There are no jump scares but the tension is often unbearable. At one point a member of the family gets away. The camera voraciously follows them, which we savvy viewers knows spells doom. If the one who gets away gets help, then they vanish from the film with dubious chances of survival. That we are watching them can only mean that one of the sadists is not far behind.

The film has several moments like this, giving you hope and then sucking it away slowly but steadily. It also has a thick gloss of meta-level commentary. The killer who seems to be in charge directly addresses the camera several times, the first time winking at us. He asks us if we've had enough later on and uses a remote to help in his torture. Near the very end, the killers discuss an imaginary film one of them wants to direct. It involves a superhero travelling between reality and fiction. I have the subtitles. The discussion is:
"But the fiction is real, isn't it?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, you see it in the film, right?"
"Of course."
"So, it's just as real as the reality which you see likewise, right?"
Subtle, Haneke. The fourth wall-breaking is his attempt to implicate us the viewer in the shenanigans on screen and the dialogue above is his attempt to remove the "just a movie" defence. I'm not sure I buy this argument (I go further: I do not buy this argument) but it is compelling. I think that to condemn us for pressing play is to deny responsibility for having made the film in the first place. The argument that the film seemingly makes, that it should not exist, is one built on very treacherous ground.

I was anticipating this film because I wanted to be horrified and by golly I was. That the film goes into a meta-level place, trying to derive horror from the fact that I the viewer could possibly be interested in this subject is an interesting choice. I'm glad it goes there too, because otherwise it would just be another run-of-the-mill slasher. I react to its attempt to make me responsible with ebullient enthusiasm. This is partly out of spite.

Anyway, the film is hard going, but not as hard as some I've seen. Haneke has an iron grip on our pulse rate and makes a hell of a movie. I'd like to see the American version, but not any time soon.