There is not one source but the whole of society is at the [core of the problem]. For me, the most irritating point today in comparison with 10 years ago [is that], even for the intellectual people, in this kind of post-modern view of life it became chic to make violence as an entertainment, even for the filmmakers and the critics, and this I find is a little bit disgusting.

As opposed to every other period in human history...?

Just saw this movie, and the word you used, patronizing, is exactly right. Turns out Haneke is the only person in the world who has felt real violence. I feel so much better now,...check that, insulted. I don't get into movies like this (I mean, like this is supposedly supposed to parody, or whatever) but I know people who do, and they're sharp, make better things than this. Sadist isn't right, misanthrope isn't either, like you said, misanthrope is pretty noble, the impression I got was of an arrogant child who at 12's convinced he knows best of all, is convinced no one else ever has realized the obvious things he's just now realizing.

Really good review. spot on like you almost always are. And sorry for what came across as overly confrontational about the Stiller, Downey, Blackface movie, I just meant to say that there's a possibility there for a provocative, interesting movie, that shouldn't be reduced in a peremptory counterattack against those who'll oversimplify it as a strawman. I agree with your post there, but I do want it to provoke (in a real way, not like this Funny Games joke.)

Jim,

Alls I was sayin' was, no matter how much you resent "Funny Games," your 4 separate posts and 4 separate discussion forums point to the obvious fact that it is one of the most important films of the year.

As I saw another person write elsewhere "This might be one of the few films on Metacritic (or maybe the only) to garner both a '100' rating and a '0.'

Somewhere a grey-bearded Austrian man is smiling."

JE: Obviously, I feel quite similarly. For a movie like this, a 0 or a 100 "rating" is practically the same thing. The movie was designed to provoke extreme reactions. No matter what you think of it, it's conceived as a "conversation piece" -- something Haneke wants people to think about and talk about. That's why I say the marketing and the reviews and the discussion are at least as important as the film itself. I certainly don't have to think a movie is "good" (I may even think it's morally reprehensible, in the case of "Mississippi Burning") to think it's worth looking at closely and discussing.

Okay, the more I read about this guy, the more I can't stand about him. This entire interview reeks of a man with his head crammed up his ass to the point that he's convinced his feces are golden. The last thing I want to pay my hard earned dollars to see is some European socialist telling me how valueless my culture is for two hours (I absorb the culture every day of my life, I don't need anyone telling me how decrepit it is, least of all someone who doesn't understand it). But there is one statement that simply sends me up the wall:

"I said it's a lie 24 times a second to serve the truth. What I will say is that film is always a manipulation."

Lies to serve the truth? What pretentious horse pucky. A movie, no matter how bad, can NOT lie, and any artist who embraces their art form as one of manipulation is disingenuous. Movies are illusions, not manipulations. I once had a desire to see this director's "Cache" but I'm glad I didn't waste my time on a work of art that isn't even valued by its creator as truthful.

And one last thing: You really don't like this guy, do you, Mr. Emerson?

Ryan: Well, he's paraphrasing something that's been attributed to Orson Welles, among many others, that "art is a lie that tells the truth" (or that reveals truths that may not be observable directly).

As for my opinion of Haneke himself, I've never met him. But I have to say it has been my experience (and forgive the generalization) that you can tell an awful lot about somebody's values and personality from the movies they make. I've seen five or six of his films and, as I said in my review, I consider at least two of them masterpieces: "Code Unknown" and "Cache." But I think "Funny Games" (both versions) is his most simplistic work. Yet it makes a swell "conversation piece." It's limited by Haneke's understanding of how American films use violence... and by his own unacknowledged sadism. In that sense, "Funny Games" is a lie that tells the truth about itself and its maker -- only neither seem to quite know it. It's a thoroughly complacent film that sets out to undermine complacency, and the film's own internal contradictions (some call it hypocrisy, but I think it's more complex than that) are what make it so provocative. (I'm suddenly reminded of something I wrote about "Dead Poet's Society," a conformist film that pretends to celebrate nonconformity.)

Haneke told the NY Times: “I’ve been accused of ‘raping’ the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely — all movies assault the viewer in one way or another. What’s different about my films is this: I’m trying to rape the viewer into independence.” Yeah: Tell people who's been raped that you did it for their own good, and act surprised when they get pissed off. That's exactly the attitude of the film, which identifies primarily with the torturers. It definitely makes the audience feel uncomfortable and resentful, but to what end?

I hope to catch up with all of Haneke's films. (I just received "The Seventh Continent" from Netflix today.) I'd like to interview him, because I have some questions I hope would make him as uncomfortable as he wants the audience to feel watching "Funny Games." I don't think I'd enjoy hanging out with him socially, though. Maybe he'd loosen up over a few Eggenberg Urbocks and become a happy drunk. I don't know.

Meanwhile, I hope the headline above can be read in a couple different ways...

Hey Jim,
Said yesterday I was going to see this, though I wasn't precisely "looking forward" to it as "entertainment" is not really the right description for "Funny Games."

Saw it. Liked it even more than the original because this time I could see the attempted humor and the purpose all at once.

Ryan:

Just expanding on Jim's response to your post: Haneke's statement is absolutely correct - all films ARE "lies." No matter how "realistic" or "documentary-style" or bare-bones or even "honest" a film is, they all manipulate in order to get across what they want to get across.

Haneke wasn't devaluing the truthfulness of his art, or anyone else's - he was simply stating, in simple terms, what movies are, acknowleding what hundreds of filmmakers have said before him.

I've heard that "lies" comment from a few sources, Brian De Palma among others, but I think they mean it a little differently than this man does. What I was getting at was that comment strikes me as disingenuous because he thinks of his art form as manipulative as opposed to enlightening. Orson Welles also associated his films with his magic act, a far more logical comparison: if a movie is a lie it's strictly because it is an illusion, not because the art form itself is disingenuous. But maybe that's just me (it wouldn't be the first time). So I think his comments put him in more the same boat as Riefenstahl than Welles, but again I haven't seen his movies so I am (as usual) unfit to judge. Just kinda calling them as I see them.

I will give Cache a chance one of these days, as your recommendation among others makes me think twice. If I can enjoy a Michael Bay movie every so often perhaps I can enjoy one by the industry's other insipid Michael.

I wonder what good it did Haneke to remake the film in America if it won't be shown in wide release. Hypothetical bloodthirsty "The Hills Have Eyes" fans from my hometown can't accidentally stumble into the theater unless the studios are willing to put "Funny Games" on the maximum number of screens, especially in the system today where the evident goal is to make as much money as possible in the first weekend, then dump even a successful film after a few weeks.

Haven't seen the remake, but I reviewed the original not to long ago. Want to throw in the mix that I like the film a lot, and I don't think that it accomplishes what Haneke wanted to accomplish.

I just want to focus on two points in particular.

1. Strangely enough, the film is superficially cerebral but completely visceral underneath. The way I describe it is: "Funny Games is a mindfuck, but mindfucking is still a form of sex". You're right to call Haneke on saying that by raping us he is making us independent. The reaction at the Cannes screening where people cheer at the shooting and then clam up at the reversal indicates that he's playing us like a piano.

2. I'll also add that the most provocative scene in Funny Games is the eight to nine minute static shot of the victims bleeding. It's boring and when they're not being tortured we don't care about them. The film doesn't really have much life unless the killers are on-screen.

Indicating that we sympathize with the killers instead of the victims, because the killers are truly free. The lives of the victims are ruled by circumstance. It require anything to have your home invaded by serial killers; but the serial killer does need to have the will and the moral foresight to go along with it. (Note that Michael Pitt, half of the Loeb and Leopold pair in Murder by Numbers, is cast as the killer in the remake).

Haneke obviously doesn't understand his own movie if he thinks that audiences will identify with the victims because of their suffering.

Eric: Thanks for "reporting back"! I thought the English version was funnier, too -- mainly because of the perfectly calibrated performances of Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet. The tone is smug, but I think they are brilliant in the first part of the movie: All the stuff with the eggs got deeper under my skin than the literal (though off-screen) violence that comes later.

If you get a chance, I'd like to hear more about your perception of the "purpose" of the movie, and how you experienced it. What did you feel it demonstrated about the nature of movie violence? See Haneke's comments above. He offers several different interpretations of the movie (as rape, as identification with the victims, as a critique of Tarantino-like violence...). Do any/all of them correspond to yours? Do you think there are other components (identification with the perpetrators, exploitation of violence) at work, too? I'm interested in the blurry line between the critique and the thing being critiqued -- an unresolved tension I felt in the film. I wonder if you and others felt something similar.

"…and by his own unacknowledged sadism. In that sense, "Funny Games" is a lie that tells the truth about itself and its maker -- only neither seem to quite know it. It's a thoroughly complacent film that sets out to undermine complacency, and the film's own internal contradictions (some call it hypocrisy, but I think it's more complex than that) are what make it so provocative. (I'm suddenly reminded of something I wrote about "Dead Poet's Society," a conformist film that pretends to celebrate nonconformity.)"

[SPOILERS AND ALL THAT]

While I don't place "Funny Games" on the same level as Haneke's masterpieces like "Caché," I do think he has done something very interesting in form that your "Dead Poet's Society" comparison doesn't acknowledge.

The film is continually out to deprive the audience of its expectations. You mention in your review that there is no nudity in the scene in which Watts is forced to strip, and that is indeed the point.

Now, there was a man behind me at the screening of the Sundance premiere whose reaction to the stripping scene simultaneously supports arguments for and against the film. The movie was shown in Sundance's Midnight Movie selection, which gave unsavvy audience members the impression that it was a simple violent torture thriller. As Watts took her shirt off while the camera stayed on her face, the man behind me kept whispering, "Show it…show it!"

Indeed, Haneke's point did not reach the audience member, but neither did the movie satisfy him. An extremely long take of the film's heroes struggling in pain doesn't have much value as complacent entertainment. Nor does the obvious knife setup with an abbreviated payoff.

JE: Jeremy, I agree with what you're saying, but I'd simply add one more level: The film creates the expectations that it thwarts. You may bring those expectations to the film (based on your experience with other films), but within "Funny Games" itself the audience is manipulated into expecting certain things, then denied them. I don't think the movie provokes a complex emotional/intellectual response, just a Pavlovian one. First you teach the dog to salivate when you ring the bell. Then you deny the treat (satisfaction/catharsis). But it's the film that is setting the terms of the experiment. You either go, and behave as it expects you to (those expectations go both ways), or you don't.

Jeremy Mathews:
"An extremely long take of the film's heroes struggling in pain doesn't have much value as complacent entertainment."

No offense meant, and apologies if I'm taking you out of context (haven't seen the film), but images of heroes/protagonists struggling in pain are pretty common in both action and horror films (both American and non-American).

So I'm confused, particularly since Haneke also emphasizes his focus on the suffering of the victims in the interviews above, marking it as part of his broadside against violence in cinema.

Put in those terms, what's different here? What distinguishes it from, say, Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"? Or (to look outside U.S. borders) from Miike's "Audition"?

I guess I may have to see this afterall, especially with all this talk. Then I would have to see the original as well. It may be too painful, but we'll see.

As far as Haneke's didacticism goes, I just realized a good analogy for what he's trying to do. One method that some parents employ to attempt to deter their children from smoking (and maybe, to a lesser extent, drinking) after catching them in the act is to force them to smoke (or drink) so much that they literally get sick of it.

Of course such methods are controversial: Not only do they seem a bit cruel, but they could cause more harm than the parents might anticipate or than is necessary (and could even exacerbate the problem). Haneke's lesson involves force-feeding viewers more brutality than they might be able to handle and presenting that brutality in ways that deny exhilaration. If we can question a parent's attempt to make a child kick a habit by such brute force, shouldn't we just as well question what Haneke is doing?

So again to those who assert that the heated debates caused by Funny Games would indicate that its filmmaker has been vindicated: Just because there's a controversy doesn't mean that the party that launched is right. There needs to be closer examination on what the point(s) of controversy is/are.

I haven't seen either version, and frankly don't think I have the stomach to do so. But a few things about the general reaction strike me as strange.

First, there's a peculiar implication that film must be entertaining or pleasing (in a broad sense)--otherwise, it's an "experience" or an "experiment," not a film. What's strange about this is that it's become accepted wisdom that in other media an artwork doesn't have to entertain, be beautiful, or please. So why the knee-jerk 18th century aesthetics prejudice in the case of movies? (My guess, based on my own unwillingness to see this film, is that it's just _harder_ to put up with ugly film--just as it's harder to put up with music that doesn't meet a baseline of melody or mood.)

Another thing that I find strange is that it sounds like this film does successfully what other highminded films about violence purport to do: present violence in a way that we won't enjoy--so that it can depict the reality of violence without seducing us to it. Why the significant outrage over this film, while, on the other hand, there is near universal acclaim for things like A Clockwork Orange and Apocalypse Now? The latter two have a long history of serving as torture porn for angry adolescents and soldiers in their off hours gearing up for battle. This film sounds like it avoids this--and for the exact reason that they fail: it's not enjoyable, they are.

Finally, if it is true (disputable, of course) that consumers (using their oft-cited "hard-earned" all-American dollars) of representations of violence are partially morally responsible for the proliferation of violence in media, and, further, responsible for any anaesthetizing affects (if any) upon our response to actual violence, then why would it be wrong for Haneke to virtually "punish" us in order to awake us to, and give us a bad conscience about, our complicity? Why so much self-righteous indignation about Haneke's self-righteous indignation?

Some of those self-righteous responders seem to defensely assume that Haneke is hypocritically taking the role of "he who is without blame." But leaving aside the idiocy of that popular moral cliche, couldn't he fully acknowledge his own complicity, and say he's producing a self-critique, a self-innoculation against violence? (Haneke's self critique, art and film's self-critique and, by collaborating with hollywood, hollywood's self critique). If so, the responder's accusation applies to themselves: Haneke's the one admitting his own insensitivity to violence and trying to remedy it, while our pure souled angry audience member doesn't share the filmmaker's sadism and long ago recognized the danger--of which she is, of course, so righteously aware and free.

What really gets me about Haneke's messege is that he seems to think American Cinema is uniquely violent.

These sick Americans like Tarentino should learn about the true nature of human suffering from Foreign pacifists like John Woo, Luc Besson, Peter Jackson, David Cronenberg, Takashi Miike, Clive Barker, Guy Richie, Chan-Wook Park, and Uwe Boll.

True, the suggestion that American films are generally more (not "uniquely") violent is a very debatable one. It is not, however, patently false.

I think a comparison of world and American films from critic's best lists might offer some support. More importantly, I suspect he's suggesting that Hollywood is the major marketer of violent film, so it's not a charge about all American film.

Finally, aren't most of the people in that list of foreigners not coincidentally strongly influenced by American film? They're not a very representative group of foreign filmmakers, at least.

JE: I've never seen an American film as violent as "Irreversible" or "Man Bites Dog." Look out for the French and the Belgians!

Jim, I think you're understating the film's effort to uncover what makes the dog salivate, so to speak. By denying us our treat, "Funny Games" forces the audience to think about how different forms of screen violence make them feel.

In your review you talk about how the film's ability to rewrite the rules undermines all the action, which is certainly part of what it's trying to do. But that scene comes during the second- or third-to-last scene in the film, the closest thing there is to a climax. Rather than an early dismissal of what follows, the scene serves as a final confirmation that, yes, everything has been rigged against these characters from the start.

Indeed, much of the Sundance audience I wrote of earlier burst into applause before the scene was rewinded back. (I'm also reminded of the audience with which I watched the climax of Neil Jordan's astoundingly confused and hypocritical revenge movie "The Brave One"—a reaction I don't think Jordan was going for, although his film is so murky that I can't be sure.) I consider it usually consider it bad practice to bring up the audience reaction, but "Funny Games" is such a reflexive film that it practically demands it.

Movie violence often makes us feel empowered—what better way to overcome a bad guy than to blow him away? The architecture of so many films involves making the hero powerless, only so he or she might, in a moment of recovery, grab the gun (or weapon of choice) and take the enemy down. Whether this is tragic, heroic or somewhere in between depends largely on the tone and context. Haneke takes away the sense of reclaimed power altogether, and makes us look at the other side of it: the people whom violence renders powerless.

Observe Pitt's reaction before he finds the remote. It is the only moment in the film that he is flustered, not in control. As long as he is the perpetrator, he remains witty, observational, tongue-in-cheek.

The two young men make the comically absurd claim that their violence was prompted by a slap in the face. But at what point do we decide that retaliatory violence is justified?

I doubt Haneke's film will reach the audience he thinks needs to see it, and I'm not sure that audience would know what to make of it. But it does pose some interesting questions about the violence. Do we (or does Haneke?) resent these people because of their wealth? Would all the agony we witnessed before have been justified if we'd been allowed that burst of revenge from Watts?

All that said, Jim, I suspect Haneke himself would be completely happy with your reaction to the film.

Stew: I didn't mean to suggest that no other director has used long takes to emphasize the pain and suffering of violence. In the case of "Funny Games" (the original was made before "Audition"), however, the shot plays out after the violence has occurred, rather than during it. It is one of several shots in which a television creates an interesting tension in the composition.

Jeremy: Very well argued -- and I think we're both coming at the same thing from different angles. Haneke tells the same story about the audience's applause in that one retaliatory moment -- at Cannes when the first movie was shown, and recently at a MoMA retrospective screening. But the response doesn't have anything to do with violence -- just formula narrative and filmmaking technique. Any time you turn the tables on your villain, you can get a similar response. Tap the knee, the reflex kicks in. It could be a chess game, or a romantic triangle, or anything at all: Just when you think our protagonist has lost everything, has been thoroughly defeated, has given up -- suddenly, he sees an opportunity and (with quick-thinking and skill) takes control of the situation! The audience applauds.

To use a dog analogy again: Most dogs will fight if they're backed into a corner. At an off-leash park, the quickest way to start a fight is for somebody to keep their dog on a leash. The leashed dog knows it has a limited range of options -- and so do the dogs who are running free. It's instinct: fight or flight. Humans have it, too. It's not a rational process: Oh, should I, given the opportunity, fight back at the intruders who have just tortured me and members of my family, have already killed and have informed us of their intent to kill us? There's no room for doubt, and that's one of the major flaws in the experiment. It's the "bet" that's explained early in the film ("You bet that you'll be alive by 9 o'clock tomorrow morning and we bet that you'll be dead") that is the real set-up as I see it, more than the later scene you mention. Of course, at that point, we know the bet has already been determined, because the movie reminds us that we're watching a movie in which the outcome has been decided. And we know whose "side" the movie is on: It's the catalysts/filmmaker against the victims/audience.

The only place where I'll give Haneke a little credit for ambiguity is in his portrayal of the wealthy "Americans" (played by two Brits whose tastes and habits are thoroughly European). We're set up to believe it's OK for their comfy lives to be disrupted. It goes further than we expect, but it takes some of the edge off. Haneke says he identifies with the suffering of the victims and not the enjoyment of the perpetrators. That's manifestly not true in "Funny Games." It's more complicated than that, whether he realizes it or not. I wish the film had been a short that ended with the first slap. The (ambiguous) point about violence would have been much better made with the egg business leading up to that and, I think, the audience would have been left even more unsettled. Sometimes less is more.

Jim, what did you think of "The Seventh Continent"?

If you could write several paragraphs analyzing it as your next post, I would be very grateful. Your attention to and passion for the minutiae of a film/HBO show is unequaled elsewhere.

I've been combing the archives of "Scanners" and have just read your dissection of the opening credit sequence of "Dexter" and post responding to the "too much product placement in 'The Sopranos'" critic.

Please write a post on "The Seventh Continent."

Harry: I'm a little overwhelmed with deadlines at the moment, but I will say I was quite moved and haunted by "Seventh Continent," a more profoundly mysterious and unnerving experience for me than the programmatic "Funny Games." A few interesting similarities, though -- like the fetishistic emphasis on consumer goods in the early scenes of both movies. In "FG" I thought that was a cheap shot at the characters who were about to be "punished" for their bourgeois lifestyle; in "SC" it came across as less a judgment than a benumbed daily ritual (the shots crop the people out of the compositions to focus on the toothbrushes, door handles, coffee maker...) that they go through without noticing. It wasn't subtle, but I thought it worked -- especially in the way the rituals were repeated and subverted.

That second time through the car wash is so brilliant and disturbing -- and can't be reduced to an equation. I liked the open-endedness of the film, the way it got you asking so many questions without overt manipulation. (Of course, as Haneke says, film is always manipulation of one sort or another.) I'll have to think about it some more (I haven't been able to shake it -- whereas the visceral impact of "FG" wore off very quickly), but I think it's closer to the capital-M Mystery of the great "Code Unknown" and "Cache" (about the unknowable) than the small-m mystery of the simpler "Funny Games" or "Time of the Wolf" (about the unknown). That's my simplistic formulation, of course, but it's all I have time to write right now!

P.S. I just featured Roger's review of Haneke's "The Piano Teacher" as the Overlooked DVD of the Week on RogerEbert.com.

When I first saw the original Funny Games, I was totally shaken, yet I found I admired it, even though I did not want to turn around and see it again. Any film that "stayed" with me, like that one did, I have to give it credit for being effective.

Still, as many of these posts have already pointed out, the asides in the film are its weakest element. These scenes, most notably the remote scene, effectively move the audience from the theater into the classroom, where the good doctor has to lecture us, the American unwashed, on the true meaning with violence.

While I do admire Funny Games, the Academy just awarded No Country for Old Men, which beats FG all to hell (no pun intended) as a "violence with a message" film (one that is, ironically, American).

NOTE: Jeremy's point about there being no true climax or release for the audience in FG could also apply to the dissatisfaction felt at the ending of NCFOM. The ending is much more poetic (and realistic, actually) than the audience expects, yet I know many audience members feel "robbed" that they didn't get to see Sheriff Bell blow away Chigurrh.

Jeremy's point about there being no true climax or release for the audience in FG could also apply to the dissatisfaction felt at the ending of NCFOM. The ending is much more poetic (and realistic, actually) than the audience expects, yet I know many audience members feel "robbed" that they didn't get to see Sheriff Bell blow away Chigurrh.

Yes... but aren't the Coens kind of "cheating" as well by giving us a violent, exciting thriller that leads us to believe there will (must?) be a violent showdown at the end, only to then deny the audience the satisfaction? That is not the audience's fault, it's the film that has built up the excitement and the 'need' for a catharsis.

Intellectually, NCFOM's ending is interesting and smart, but it's also very unsatisfying, storywise.

But then movies should be more than just 'stories with pictures', I guess.

Oscar Wilde said: "Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself".

Was Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, a film with horrific violence one of the films he seeks to skewer? How about Wild at Heart? Fargo? Private Ryan? Godfather? These are films with terrible, on-screen violence which happen to be very good.
This pseudo-intellectual, sanctimonious, self righteous bilge. It's not the violence, the blood, the guts or the gore but the tone which makes a film exploitation. That means this is really all about taste, not some deep sickness in society. People who love film love films that have nasty stuff and that doesn't mean they advocate the stuff.
Even some exploitation films are a good thing. Consider Grindhouse. This was cartoonish, hyperbolic trash but in my opinion, a real hoot. Most sentient beings with enough IQ to write their names in the ground with a stick know ITS NOT REAL!!
There is a non sequitor, a disconnect that renders any argument of directly linking the enjoyment of violent art to the enjoyment of violence utterly anomolous. Sure, people who like Faces of Death or I Spit on Your Grave should seriously consider medical intervention but who is anyone to draw a line for anyone else? Who is this clown to tell anyone what is or is not exploitation and what is violent but artistic? Cache had a man slit his own throat on screen and Piano Teacher has some very odd but explicit sex scenes. Is the line there for him?

Thank you for bringing up NCfOM Robert. I was thinking of it exactly after Funny Games. The off-screen violence and the ending that defeats the audience's expectations caused much the same reaction that Mr. Haneke appears to have hoped for, but with much greater artistry and success.

I have to say, though the split seems pretty strongly down the middle regarding people's reactions to the film, this discussion and many of the interesting things people have had to say made it worth seeing the movie for me.

I still think it's a nasty bit of cinematic terrorism, but the conversation is a good one. I'm more interested in people's thoughts on the nature of movies and audience reactions and the role of the director than I am about Haneke's commentary on violence, however both topics are important.

One reason I've been reluctant to see Funny Games myself is that I'm getting a little bored with this kind of game-playing. I found NCfOM to be less than the sum of its parts for the same reason; building the film like it were a normal crime thriller and then just dropping the threads so everything winds down in an existential funk isn't exactly profound. I think we're at the point where the subversions are more cliche than the cliches being subverted. I found Haneke's Cache to be a better, more elegant and original undermining of thriller expectations, challenging them in ways that didn't involve a simple 180-degree turn or a wink at the camera.

I'll likely be seeing at least one version of FG so I'll be able to know what everyone's talking about, but I do wish Haneke would take another cue from David Lynch and play dumb when it comes to the intent of his films rather than spilling his guts at every opportunity.

I have noticed over the past few years that whenever a foreign director makes a film that is /is perceived as a criticism of America or Americans that even seasoned critics seem to hate it far more than seems reasonable. I am sure there are valid reasons from a film criticism point of view as to why many dislike the movie. However, in most cases if a movie were truly bad and exploitive and pandering a critic would just dismiss it and move on. Here we have a critic give the film 1/4 star and then do nothing but talk about it for a week, I think it is the threat of an outsider criticising Americans that cause the overly dramatic reactions.

I am reminded of the reaction to Dogville where nearly every American critic said the movie criticized America, mentioned the director has never been to America and then called it a horrible movie. Personally, I always have viewed Dogville as a criticism of the hypocracy of Christians, which, lets be honest is stronger in American than anywhere else.

JE: I think "Funny Games" would have been better if it had been more recognizably American -- instead of having the American couple (played by British actors) with a very European lifestyle. Remember: This movie was originally an Austrian one, and has been re-located to the U.S. with virtually no changes. I don't think it's criticizing "America" at all (though Haneke says he intended it as a criticism of certain American movies). But it so obviously uses the techniques of a European art film that the "criticism" seems wide of the target.

Jim, no obit for Arthur C. Clarke on the frontpage? Or are you holding that until the 40th anniversary of 2001 in two weeks?

JE: No. I'm just depressed.

I guess I passed the test. From the moment I saw the trailer I decided not to see it.

I completely understand your rejection of this movie, but I don't necessarily think it is the movie's failure.

The stated intention that Funny Games is a critique of the approach of using violent to entertain in American movies. I do take exception to the specific reference to American movies, because there are loads of Japanese torture porn and German ones, and I'm sure Chinese ones as well.

But the point is valid, I think. It is undeniable that in reality 1) some people enjoy torturing others, 2) some people can be made to enjoy torturing others, 3) some people enjoy imaging themselves as torturers of others, 4) some people enjoy watching fake tortures. It is a repulsive thing to admit, but it is undeniable humanity.

I am instantly reminded of my deep hatred for the movie "Seven," still hailed by many as one of the best in the past several decade or whatever. No, I don't claim to be morally superior like perhaps Haneke does. I'm just stating my honest opinion directly from my gut feeling that Seven is one of the most hateful movies I have seen, because I sensed a certain glee and fantasy-fulfillment in all the bleak details that seem to be exactly what Haneke is referring to. (I refuse to watch horror movies too and am not ashamed of admitting it.) You see, the line between dehumanizing cruelty and art is not so objectively drawn, because plenty of reasonable and kind and normal people would disagree with me and do not feel Seven is cruel or dehumanizing. Humanity is an uncertain thing.

At the risk of sounding like psychobabbles, I want to point out that excessive aggression and a lack of empathy are often (but not always) the result of childhood abuse or neglect. For some children who are bullied, abused, or terrorized when they are small and powerless, the only refuge for their sanity is to either identify with the sadist or take up the role of the masochist, both of which provide a comforting illusion of control. It is a not-uncommon phenomenon that has always existed in humanity. I don't want to judge or condemn anyone. I just want to point out that cruelty indeed exists around us.

The sequences in “Funny Games” are straight out of any rote thriller, but they're meant to be profound. I love most of Haneke’s films, but this one is his worst and most condescending. This film is basically a shot for shot remake of his 1997 film, however, all the suspense is gone because we already know what happens. Haneke wants us violent Americans to exit the theater thinking about our regular consumption of cinematic violence, but all I was thinking about after this film was Haneke’s condescension to the audience. Buñuel died before video killed the radio star but Haneke, a great architect of sustained movie tension, shares with the late master an obsession with disrupting bourgeois complacency. What separates them is that Buñuel's funny games were actually funny and whenever he pointed his finger, it pointed everywhere, including at himself. Haneke's admonishments are disturbing only in the sense that they're never self-critical, and while watching this film, there's always a sense that he thinks he's above his characters, his audience, and scrutiny. Haneke maybe the most wicked man to emerge from Austria since Hitler.

Oh, I understand. I didn't really feel like reading much of the eulogies to him today either. I know Roger probably would've written something if he was feeling better, given the many interesting correspondences he had with Clarke.

I can't help feeling a little sentimental about tonight being a full moon.

Depression should never be an excuse to stall a eulogy, Jim. At least write one for the late Anthony Minghella :)

And now add Paul Scofield to your list. Can't help but wonder who'll be next...

i haven't read all of the comments, so if this has already been covered, i apologize.

isn't haneke equating himself with the two men torturing the family? (if he isn't, i certainly am.) how is this conclusion not inevitable....how does haneke think he is doing anything morally instructive, either through lack of instruction or any other conceivable manner?

I think it may be a mistake to view Haneke's intentions as doing something "morally instructive" or presenting any novel insight or message about violence. (This overlaps with my concern that we're taking a 19th century attitude to film here: "what's the message of the artwork?" may be as outdated an approach in this case as "It's not pretty or enjoyable!")

If his purpose is to make us endure the representation of violence without enjoying it and even deeply abhorring and resenting it, then I think this suggests the level the film is supposed to work on is visceral rather than (oh irony, since we resent those pretentious Europeans being to intellectual for us!) an intellectual (and consequently moral) level.

Very simply: the worry is that the consumption of representations of violence makes us inoculated against exposure to it. When we encounter it, rather than the natural reaction of fight or flight, horror or disgust (a desire to end it or get away from it, to react rather than passively absorb), we are inclined to (a): say, "Ooh neat! Let's see that again!" (exhibit A: Saw 1 through 100) or (b): engage in a moralistic self-righteous dialogue about how bad violence is (then say "Let's see it again!") (Exhibit B: Clockwork Orange, Scorsese, Coppola, all HBO fodder, all NPR and documentary fodder, the evening news).

I assume the goal is very simple: to make an audience just once react naturally and in a healthy way to the representation of violence. The broader goal might be that this experience might make it harder for us to either enjoy or calmly view and later hold cerebral discussions about other representations of violence.

Maybe this means it isn't an artwork at all, and really a psychological treatment (the represented treatment in Clockwork Orange enacted on the audience). But it doesn't seem pointless or absurd to make people less capable of digesting violence, and while it's unpleasant that doesn't amount to sadism (taking away a baby's bottle is unpleasant, but it doesn't make mommy a sadist).

Note that Haneke has now, in this discussion, been seriously compared to a rapist (which he less seriously embraces), a terrorist, and to Hitler.

Now, if people could be equally angry at the evening news for showing dead Middle Eastern bodies, or the administration form manufacturing them, or the candidates for taking them lightly, we might be somewhere.

Comparing Haneke to Hitler is just crazy. Haneke is a way better filmmaker!

Funny thing about funny games is how just about everyone who is strongly opposed to the film still takes time to mention how much they like Haneke otherwise. I'm surprised nobody (at least in this thread - I haven't read the others) has brought up the example of Pasolini's "Salo."

I find it an utterly loathesome film, and it's a damn shame it's Pasolini's last and perhaps most notorious film. Yes, I "get it" - it's meant to be a record of the true evil of fascism - an evil without redemption. But it's just not worth it to sit through a film like "Salo" to understand the point. "Night and Fog" makes the point a whole lot better merely by relying on a simple recitation of the facts.

I have not yet seen the remake of "Funny Games" though I have seen the original. I can say two good things about it: I made it all the way through, and (pardon my cliche) it made me think. It mostly made me think that I shouldn't have sat all the way through it which, interestingly enough, is precisely what I did with "Benny's Game," a film I abandoned about halfway through and have no urge to revisit.

But let me join the chorus: I LOVE some of Haneke's other films, especially "Cache" and the absurdly brilliant "The Seventh Continent" (a great companion piece to Fassbinder's underrated "Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?")

I don't respond to this side of Haneke's work which I think of as his "Catherine Breillat mode" of transgression for the sake of transgression. Like much of Breillat's work and "Salo," it is simultaneously repulsive and utterly boring.

JE: I think I did mention "Salo" at some point -- I was thinking of it, anyway. (And just last week I got out "Herr R." for re-watching, though it's still sitting on top of my DVD player.) You know what I think is a crucial difference between Haneke and Pasolini or Fassbinder? The latter don't try to hide how much they're getting off on the sadism they're showing (even when it seems repulsive and boring). Haneke assumes a moral superiority/distance in "Funny Gams" that feels patronizing to me. Not in "Seventh Continent" or "Cache" or "Code Unknown," though. (And his Kafka adaptation, "The Castle," demonstrates he even appreciates humor!)

Haneke is a genious. Just look at your responses. You react just the same way as when people challenge you about Iraq war which is just another Funny Game.