Funny Games

Michael Haneke's Funny Games isn't really funny at all. Not to be too harsh or anything, but it's basically a pretentious piece of shit.

Apparently this movie is a remake of Haneke's earlier German film of the same name. Yes, the director loved his movie SO MUCH he decided to helm Funny Games both times for two distinctly different audiences. Not only that, but he didn't change much of anything between the two. I have it on good authority if you've managed to see one of these gems you've basically seen them both.

I'm not actually an idiot. I often play one on this blog but I have had that new-fangled book learnin' people talk about. Sometimes I even watch foreign movies just because. Yeah. That's how special I am. If I'm having one of my good days I can even decipher concepts and stuff and tell when I'm being mocked. Those days are few and far between, but it is possible. I didn't need a remake in the English language just so I could see the director's vision. Sooner or later I would have rented or Netflixed the source material. Just saying.

If you want to be surprised by this film you should stop reading now. Fair warning. Funny Games is basically pointless. If you've seen Them (French title Ils) or the American remake The Strangers you've seen all this before. Oh no! There are serial killers who murder just because they can! No motivation except boredom! They're "disgusted by the emptiness of existence!" Whew. That's bold and exciting and hasn't been done before.

To be fair, technically Michael Haneke directed the first Funny Games before Them was released. He was the pioneer, not the copier. Except, of course, that there's roughly a million movies with killers who kill just because for no rhyme or reason. Whatever. Michael Haneke had a bigger plan. He's quoted as saying (and I'm paraphrasing) "If you walked out in the middle of this film, you don't need this movie. If you stayed until the end, this movie is for you".

Funny Games can be summed up in one or two paragraphs. Two condescending young killers in white gloves go around murdering pretentious rich people while they're vacationing in their summer homes on the lake. God forbid you make money or enjoy going on trips and hanging out with friends! It's almost like you deserve to be tortured! Peter and Paul (or Beavis and Butthead, or Tom and Jerry, the names change but they all mean the same thing) then proceed to play "funny games" with their victims.

Some of these games include betting whether or not the vacationers will be dead within twelve hours, playing cat-in-a-bag with the children, (It's a fun game. Stick the kid's head in a bag and hurt him/her until the mother or father does what the killers tell them to do. All the cool kids are playing it) or let the victim choose the method of their demise. None of the "innocents" get out alive. It's a torture flick without much on-screen physical torture.

If that's all Funny Games was about I wouldn't have a problem with it. I've watched worse, and you don't go into a horror movie expecting a happy ending. If you do, you're not a true-blue horror fan. We might wish the innocents would get away but everyone knows the star of the show is usually the killer. Sometimes the movies stop being about the victims at all, and the killers become caricatures of themselves (Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers, anyone?).

I even enjoyed the way the bratty murderers engaged the audience. Paul sometimes talked directly to the camera, in essence making the viewer a participant in the evil goings-on. I appreciated that. It was a nice conceit, the idea that by the very act of watching the audience is partially responsible for whatever happens. If that was as far as it went, I would have said "good point!" and moved on.

However, the lucky lucky viewer was also barraged with monologues about how fiction is basically the same as reality as well as being bludgeoned with the idea that violence is bad and most people are evil for watching it. How did Michael Haneke get this amazing idea out to the masses? By making a horror movie filled with mental torture and death! Innovative, right?

Wrong. I don't like people lecturing me, and that's what this film felt like. A great big hypocritical lecture. Just because I happen to like horror movies that doesn't mean I glorify violence and it doesn't mean I enjoy watching people blow up into gooey bits. Well, sometimes I do, but that's not the point.

Quite a bit of the time people watch horror to be scared or in the often vain hope the underdog will win. They don't usually, but that makes the times they do all the more special. Watching horror/thriller movies is like seeing what makes people afraid right now. It changes all the time, but for a short time the viewer feels like they have their finger on the pulse of society itself. Heh. Or maybe that's just me (I didn't say I wasn't pretentious, just discerning).

Sure, maybe there's the requisite sicko that gets off to watching people be raped, tortured, etc., but there's a good portion of people that watch for other reasons. I don't need Michael Haneke's judgment. And I did watch until the end, asshole.

Well, now that this review is really long and self-indulgent, I'll say this. Funny Games was well made. Other than the special "message" it was also entertaining in a sick way. This is not a feel good film or something you would watch with friends, but if you're in the mood for pretension and pontificating the points are easy to follow. The cast was uniformly excellent. I love Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, Brady Corbin, and Michael Pitt. They were all far better than this movie deserved.

If you've seen Funny Games already and found the secrets of life, the universe and everything within it's shadowed gruesome plot, drop me a line and let me know what I missed. Despite all the rants, I like a good discussion.

amber t