31 Nights of Halloween Horror part 15 - Funny Games

Funny Games
108 minutes
Dir. Michael Haneke
1997/Austria

Tonight's movie is not funny, in fact it is anything but fun.  It's a social commentary on violence in media and it take's its audience on a very dark path that almost condemns them for watching the film while ironically only appealing to the type of people that would watch such a film.  Let's get a little high brow tonight and put on our studious scholar caps as we discuss what's not so funny about Funny Games.

This is the 1997 original version I watched.  The film was remade in 2007 with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.  It was made by the exact same director and it is pretty much the exact same movie, so if you only saw the remake you can still play along.  As in most cases, while having not seen the remake, I assume the original is better only if for the reason that the original has no name actors in it which just makes the terror more believable as opposed to having recognizable stars, that while horrendous acts are happening on screen, you know everyone is safe and it is just a movie.

So we start our journey with a family driving to a vacation home on a lake with their young son.  It is safe to say they are a conservative well off family as they have their large sailboat in tow.  I assume they are playing a game of guess the name of the classical music song on their ride up, as we listen along.  But once the credits hit the screen your ears are assaulted by the chaotic sounds of John Zorn.  If you are unfamiliar with his music, check out his Naked City for a little taste of the extreme.  A definite premonition of what lies ahead.

Once settled into their home they are soon visited by two well dressed clean cut young men all dressed in white wearing white gloves.  Unbeknownst to our vacationing family, like vampires they invite these two guys in and then can't seem to get them out.  And that is the beginning of the games.  Funny Games is a movie along the lines of Last House on the Left in the sense that bad things happen to good people for no particular reason except you are there.  It is also reminiscent of Straw Dogs in the sense of a home invasion, which became a more popular subject years later.  There isn't really a need to get into the acts of violence or how the family is tormented, what is most important here is the way they are portrayed in the film, and that is by showing very little violence at all.

In one scene the mother is told to undress, the entire time the camera stays on her face to show us, the voyeur, the look of angst and humiliation on her face because that is what is most impactful and distasteful.  In another scene one of the young men goes out to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich as a tragic act of violence takes place in the other room.  We are focused on Paul making his sandwich and only hear the action in the other room until he comes back in and we are exposed to the bloody aftermath.  Funny Games is not interested in the act of violence as much as it is interested in the effect of violence and its outcome. There is nothing sensationalized or dramatized here.  No masked killers that we root or killing random teenagers that we cheer.

The most interesting thing Funny Games does is break the fourth wall.  Paul the main antagonist often times turns to the camera and gives us a smirk or a wink to let us know we are in on the joke.  When he tries to make a bet with the couple wether they think they will be alive in the next nine hours he actually turns to us the viewer and asks if we want to get in on the bet too.  When there seems to be a little bit of redemption happening, Paul literally picks up the TV remote and rewinds the movie itself so he can change the outcome.  There is no escape from what is shown on screen.  This is what you want?  This is what you get and it is not pretty.  The villains don't wear black, they are nice polite seemingly trustworthy young men.  No one is safe.

Funny Games is a heavy handed film with a lot of moral commentary littered throughout the movie.  There are scenes where the camera just lingers on people for a good 2-3 minutes of them not moving, but just filled with disbelief and grief.  The director is really making his point that todays media glorifies violence almost to where it does not seem real, when in fact it is the ugliest thing there is.  But oddly enough who is the audience for this movie?  The people who shun violence wouldn't want to subject themselves to such a horrid theme, so is the audience the people that watch violence for entertainment, the same people the movie is condemning?  The home invasion theme to me is the most scariest kind of movie.  The one place you should feel safe and protected can instantly become violated and your tomb.  Though movies about creepy kids and bugs come in a close second.

Definitely not a feel good movie, it is more of a thinking man's film.  Not by a complex story, but what the story is trying to say.  Tomorrow I promise we'll get back into some more light hearted fair.  Some thing fun and...violent.