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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 - 06:25 pm: | |
Craig
I'm interested to know your opinions on Haneke's Funny Games. (Austrian, American or both) |
Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.225.14
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 - 09:54 pm: | |
I saw the original, Weber, and found it intensely tense, traumatizing almost. The breaking of the fourth wall is fascinating - it does, oddly, enable the viewer to "take" this film, and reassures him/her it is only a film after all. They're so few and far between, and yet, they're almost like dashes of cold water to bring you back to consciousness, in the midst of mind-numbing torture. Conversely, the easing of this tension... does it mitigate the power of the whole?...
As for the template theory (do I sense myself being tempted along this route?), the film very clearly is a thriller, and follows the genre straight-forwardly - the 4th wall moments are tension-breakers solely - to denigrate the film for those, would be much like denigrating particularly long films (back in ye olden days, in a movie theatre) for their intermissions. Intermissions destroy a level of impetus and momentum, surely, even for the exhausted - they are awkward. So are the 4th wall moments here in FUNNY GAMES - but other than that, it's a straight-forward, particularly gruesome and relentless thriller..... |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.241.143
| | Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 09:13 am: | |
>>it's a straight-forward, particularly gruesome and relentless thriller.....>>
Craig, it seems to me that you missed the point. "Funny Games" is anything but what you describe it as. You need to start thinking outside the box Hollywood has constructed for you.  |
Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.233.73
| | Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 03:57 pm: | |
Zed, how is FUNNY GAMES not straight-forward (two killers show up, and systematically dismantle a family), particularly gruesome, relentless (even when we think rescue is at hand, it's not), nor a thriller?...
Perhaps it's other things too, but it's by far, mostly this. |
Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
| | Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 04:10 pm: | |
It's definitely not straightforward. I'll leave it to Zed, who's much better with words than wot i is, to explain why |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
| | Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 04:23 pm: | |
If you don't know I can't tell you. |
Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.233.73
| | Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 04:27 pm: | |
If you can't tell me, then you must not know.  |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
| | Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 04:38 pm: | |
First you must both watch a film and see the film, Grasshopper. Then all will become clear. |
Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.233.73
| | Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 04:56 pm: | |
"Look here brother, who you jiving with that cosmik debris?..." - Frank Zappa  |
Chris_morris (Chris_morris)
Username: Chris_morris
Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 12.165.240.116
| | Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 06:15 pm: | |
I love Funny Games. But it seems to me that Craig and Zed are both right. (And this is perhaps one of the reasons why so many people hate Funny Games.) |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
| | Posted on Friday, May 29, 2009 - 09:54 am: | |
Now that's an interesting comment, Chris...and you might just be right. |
Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
| | Posted on Friday, May 29, 2009 - 09:55 am: | |
I still maintain, however, that the film is only superficially a thriller. To use Craig's term, Haneke is taking the thriller template and twisting it till it snaps. It's a work of genius, IMHO, and like most true genius is often misunderstood. |
Chris_morris (Chris_morris)
Username: Chris_morris
Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 12.165.240.116
| | Posted on Friday, May 29, 2009 - 03:45 pm: | |
I agree with you, Zed. Haneke made a faux-thriller. But the thriller facade is so well done, it actually works on its own terms. I've often said about Funny Games that Haneke's main point would have been better understood if he'd made a less effective thriller. But if he'd done that, the film wouldn't be as enjoyable to watch. It's a kind of impossible Mobius strip: a film commenting on itself. It's daring, ambitious, and still -- because it works on its own terms, viewers like Craig can simply disregard the metafictional aspects and enjoy the ride. A work of genius indeed. |
Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig
Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.1.208
| | Posted on Friday, May 29, 2009 - 04:18 pm: | |
Chris, you put it best - though I'm not totally "disregarding" the metafictional aspects. They're so infrequent, like blips - and though one is significantly crucial, they don't overwhelm the whole.
Zed, I'm not sure it snaps the thriller template - though it does seem to snap the viewer's experience OF watching film. When the remote control scene appears, its result is an odd, real-world effect: the viewer is depressed that the heroine didn't succeed - but oddly, because of this particular method of the film-maker's expressing it, the viewer is heartened to remember this is only a film. By depressing the detached viewer's hopes IN the story (engaged in the story), the film-maker has encouraged the real-life viewer OUTSIDE the on-film story. The 4th wall is truly broken, in ways rare for film. The only way to do that, is to mostly remain pure thriller throughout... more breakings of the 4th wall would have mitigated that effect... so, perhaps you're right, in the end, Zed? that FUNNY GAMES is mostly, in sum total, a template-breaker?... maybe.... |
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