Funny Games U.S. – Film Review
“I didn’t want to offend anyone, but I did perhaps want them to be provoked. If anybody is offended, it’s his [or her] own fault. You are free to leave the theater after 5 minutes. I have always said: anyone who watches the film from beginning to end apparently has needed it,” says Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke to Stern about his latest film Funny Games U.S., a scene for scene, shot by shot remake of his own notorious creation bearing the same name sans the U.S. tag a decade ago. The original German cast (starring The Lives of Others‘ Ulrich Mühe) is replaced by Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, and the story is taken to the US. Why a remake of his own film? Because, the controversial director elaborates, the 1997 original has not reached his intended American audience due to the language barrier and the average viewers’ aversion to subtitles.
In the opening scene, an aria accompanies us as we follow, with a bird’s eye view, a car towing a sailboat moving on the highway, languorously, almost elegantly. As the car dives into the forest, the camera closes in to acquaint us with Ann and George the couple, Georgie the son and Lucky the dog. Mom and dad take turns putting opera CDs on the car stereo and quiz the other about the title and its composer. Child and dog sit in the backseat of the car safely on its way to their lake house. The scene is idyllic, mood content. Out of the blue the film title in blood-red is thrust onto the screen overshadowing the joyous and oblivious family as death metal and human shrill cuts off the classical music and jolts the audience awake from halcyon reverie. This is Haneke’s warning.
At the holiday house, father and son go to the lake leaving mother alone in the kitchen. A timid, soft-spoken young man clad in polo shirt, tennis shorts and white gloves appears at the screen door. Ann lets the well-mannered and apologetic chap in, who introduces himself as Peter and explains that her neighbor, Mrs. Thompson, has sent him to borrow some eggs. Ann is suspicious but gladly helpful and gives him the eggs, only to have him accidentally dropping the eggs and asking for some more. Ann rather reluctantly complies and requests that he leaves the house as Peter accidentally knocks her cellphone into the sink water. But Peter returns with Paul, another articulated, polo-shirted, white gloved young man in tennis shorts, to demand more eggs and takes the liberty of trying out the family’s golf clubs. George returns with Georgie and tries to alleviate the tension. The power struggle escalates and the Calloway golf club becomes a weapon that breaks George’s kneecap. The whole family is held hostage and a series of psychological torture and physical violence ensue. “Why are you doing this?” the visibly shaken father asks. “Why not?” is the answer. The game-loving duo’s intention finally manifests as Paul demands his captives to make a bet: “you bet that you’re gonna be alive tomorrow at nine o’clock and we bet that you’ll be dead.”
Haneke says that he first made Funny Games as a commentary to the compulsive consumerism of packaged media violence. He haughtily declares that people who watch the film are all accomplices of the horror that take places on the screen for not walking out of the theater or exercising the remote control. To drive home his point, Paul in the film would look into the camera and wink. He would converse directly with the audience. “You’re on their side, aren’t you?” he snickers. Having condemns us as bloodthirsty violencholics, Haneke is resolute in denying us any possible satisfaction or relief. In a scene when Ann grabs a riffle and blasts Peter away, we are forced to watch in disbelief and exasperation as Paul picks up a remote control and literally rewinds the scene to undo the justice we cheered for, and thus kills our last ounce of hope. Not only does Paul taunts his voyeuristic audience, he also ridicules an incompetent God. “Say a prayer,” a sincere Paul coax Ann on, “if you can say it without any mistakes, then God is on your side, and you get to choose what happens next.” “I don’t know any prayers,” Ann responded dejectedly. Paul then asks Peter to recite one for her. “I love you God with all my might. Keep me safe all through the night.” When she begins perfunctorily Paul interrupts her. “No, you can’t say it like that…it’s a prayer, Ann! You’re asking the Lord for something, so pray properly. Get down. Kneel properly. Put your hands together. Where is the person you’re praying too? Up there right? So put your hands up there!” Pauls yanks her tied hands up with a rope. “Now Ann, from the bottom of your heart, pray.”
What makes Funny Games such a hollowing and unconscionable experience is its arbitrariness and its realism. Peter and Paul intrude into the family’s life out of nowhere, with the sole purpose of terrorizing them, making them “kaput”. There are no motives behind their cruelty; tragedy simply strikes, like earthquakes or Tsunami. The over-the-top brutality, however, comes not from the violent acts (in fact, almost all physical violence takes place off camera) but rather the sadistic foreplay, and the nonchalance and understatement with which the violent acts are carried out. When Paul talks to the camera, it’s just as likely that he’s not talking to the viewer but a third psychopath holding the camera documenting the atrocity. Perhaps Haneke is ultimately mocking the unspoken suburban fear of the bourgeoisie: properties and houses are fenced and walled to protect themselves from the criminal lower class, when the most evil malefactors should appear in tennis whites and golf gloves in their neighborhood.
As much as I sympathize Haneke’s motive for making Funny Games, his accusing his audience of being partners in crime feels rather self-serving, if not downright hypocritical. Many of us stick around because we want to see how the family survive the ordeal. When Georgie makes a run for it, we’re certain he’s going to put an end to this nightmare. Don’t kids just always save the day? And as Ann and George desperately try to dry the cellphone and dial for help, their struggle for survival is poignantly human, which makes the subsequent fatal decision by Ann all the more tragic. Despite all this, we watch on, for we believe there’s point to all this horror and the good will eventually triumphs over the evil. We are convinced that the family will win the bet and Haneke knows it. Why lead the audience on and then blames them with concocted accusations? Perhaps Haneke’s heart’s in the right place, but his unjustified justification rings bogus. The film itself is a impeccable piece of art, let the all-knowing film critics or pseudo-intellectual academics to expound the hows and whys. If Haneke was really being honest, this is what he would tell the audience up front: “Funny Games, masterfully crafted with all the elements of a thriller, is a tragedy of a well-off family being humiliated, abused, tortured by two polite young men that look like they were born in a Nazi baby farm. The young men murder their preys one by one. The dog, the 10-year-old-son, the father, the mother. No one is spared. Watch and be disturbed.”
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