Funny Games (U.S. Version)

Michael Haneke's remake of Funny Games is something else. It's less a game than it is something of a test, an experiment for the audience. Haneke made his original 1997 film (apparently, I haven't seen it, even though with one or two minor exceptions it's the same as this new 2008 refashioning) as a comment on what was an "American phenomenon" of movie violence. Or something. He's made his feature this time with stars- Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, even Michael Pitt as a sort of indie-star of the moment- so that it's not just some intellectual snobs going to see it in some dingy art-house dive in the Village. No, this time he's made a movie for the cineplex crowd, so that his pretentious intellectual exercise can be thrust upon an unsuspecting public who has been intrigued by the theatrical trailer (possibly, if one hasn't read online about the original or what the film really is about).

It's about, in its essential "genre" terms (as "genre" Haneke would probably put in quotes first), a bourgeois family, mother-father-son, out for a weekend in their house along a sunny lake. There are also two preppy-looking kids, Peter and Paul (or Tom and Jerry or Beavis and Butt-Head, take your pick), one of whom stops by asking if he can borrow some eggs. They break (by fault of his own or not who cares). He asks for four more. They, too, break thanks to the family dog jumping on the lad. Things escalate. Father gets leg swiped by golf club. Now the game has begun, which is basically that they will kill the family by the end, or not.

Intriguing premise? Sure. And Haneke, in a methodical style right from the start, shoots and edits like each shot should look out of Hopper or Rockwell; beautiful angles of a car driving, a happy family... and then even into the early portion of the picture. But even from here there's a slight smugness to Haneke's hand as a director. 'Let's make it obvious, shall we?' could be his mantra, and this includes the long tried practice of a character (Pitt's specifically) who looks at the camera and speaks to the audience. Breaking the fourth wall, so daring! But I tried to stick with it, I really tried. It becomes clear after a short tick of time that Haneke is attempting to experiment, at mixing preachy lecture and sadistic killer flick ala Scream, and it doesn't connect, at all.

In his go to present a self-conscious approach, he ends up talking down to the viewer with the message while ALSO making a sincere slasher picture with supposedly realistic connotations. It's an act of frustration, and not one that is entertaining, or successful as a piece of provocative fiction. If Haneke wants to build forward on the theory that violence is a horrible, ugly thing in movies, that's fine. And if we wants to make a thriller with some unconventionality to it, that's fine too. But in trying to combine the two, he falls flat on his face, condescendingly so.

What it also boils down to, and this is a crucial point in my book (maybe not in others but in mine it is), is that for the most part he doesn't even make a lot of what he's presenting as the "entertainment" as entertaining. There are stretches in this film, practically static shots, where near nothing happens, and after the stretches the film doesn't recover, almost in spite of its exploitative rebound in the final reels. Aside from Haneke's penchant for tooling his audience into his own experiment group, where his pretension in his message shines through, he doesn't even make a horror film that has anything fresh or invigorating for said genre; practically all violence is off-screen, and it's not offensive or shocking like some critics have stated. It's only shocking in the sense that it's not as shocking as you might expect. If anything, there's an ambivalence to the violence as a self-conscious piece for the audience that shows Haneke not going all the way.

A directorial flip-flopper, he wants to appeal to the base of fans he has over the Piano Teacher and Cache among others- many of which I've heard are great acts of genre subversion- and the adolescents who come in from the mall stores and the food court to give the thrills and spills of a genre piece. And, to compound this, the characters aren't halfway convincing, so it becomes less about feeling sympathetic or vengeful or (dare I say it) homicidal towards one group or another than about Haneke's pins for his theoretical bowling ball. Not even that simple conceit is allowed.

In the end, it's a cinematic experience, but like those of the lessor Pasolini films (Salo would be the notorious example, but Teorema also comes to mind) and of course Godard's later works it doesn't follow through as a real tough act of satire or subversion but as something more trite and defective. If you already feel like you're proud of yourself for "getting" what Haneke's trying to deliver, without seeing if the Emperor has clothes or not, have at it, you'll have a good time. But for a large portion of the audience, it's almost slap in the face.

4.5/10