I've seen the trailer for FG at least three times now (I've seen it before "Be Kind Rewind," and "Definitely, Maybe"), and every time I've blurted out, "What kind of creep would want to see that?" and nearly walked out. Come on! Oh, and the music in the trailer. Sheesh. Only a sadist would see that trailer and think, "Ah, now that's an enjoyable way to spend two hours!"

I can see making a movie as a test, but not the effing trailer.

chris: Yes, the advertising campaign is just as important as the movie itself in a conceptual exercise like this one. How do they lure people into the theaters? What kind of "entertainment experience" do they lead them to expect?

I'm curious: Was there an audible crowd reaction when the trailer was shown before those comedies? Besides yours, I mean?

I too have been seeing the trailer infront of movies since it popped up last year. The reaction that I've heard usually ranges from "that looks awful" (I assume in the grusome sense, not a quality sense), and "dude that looks sweet" (torture-film fans...not paraphrasing at all). I think the trailer is effective, but, having seen Haneke's original, probably misrepresents the film a bit.

You might find Haneke's statments ridiculous but I do think that the people who are roped into seeing it by the advertising do NEED the movie. I've wondered whether they'll "get it" or shrug it off like they would any Saw or Hostel movie.

I'd say I was already quite critical in my analysis of violence on screen, but Haneke's film stil shook me like few other ever have. On a purely visceral level, it's an incredibly powerful movie, and if it at all brings about some kind of intelligent discussion on complacency towards violence in media, I can't see that as a bad thing.

Marketing side note: I caught Naomi Watts on Jimmy Kimmel Live earlier tonight and Kimmel brought up Haneke's statement, and film violence while he was pitching the film, so it seems that'll be a part of the marketing.

I find Michael Haneke generally overrated, and the original Funny Games’ apparent damnation of middle class comfort as profound as a 14-year-old’s rants, having just discovered “Never Mind the Bollocks.” That it’s coming from a seemingly self-hating petit-bourgeois Euro-liberal (Euroliberal in German) makes it all the more ridiculous. I also think the subtext of his films overshadow the substance – the home invasion “works” on a deeper level in the film as the director questions middle-class complacency – fine, I suppose. But the story itself involves a sadistic home invasion – how can you try to send people a message when the subjects are unwilling victims, their ordeal so gruesome and gratuitous. His apparent stance against American cinema is equally tired and unoriginal.

Here is a quote from the director:

"Pornography, it seems to me, is no different from war films or propaganda films in that it tries to make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive elements of life consumable."

Wow. Deep. What about torture porn, Michael?

Jim, months ago I sent an email to Ebert's movie answer man column asking his opinion about the dull similarities in the Funny Games trailer (US remake) and Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange trailer and marketing. To me it seemed clear that the marketing side is trying to sell it as some initially as some sort of ACO sequel for the art house audience or just for those kids who abound in their myspaces recreating Malcom McDowell's gang of dystopic misfits' wardrobe and poses.
Unfortunately my email didnt seem to be read or published, but I still believe that it's an interesting point to debate: the attempt to appropriate deliberately some other film's iconographic marketing to sell it to some future audience. Can you see the similarities? And if so what do u think of that comparison

The original Funny Games is one of my all-time eye-rollers. An "eye-roller" is my term for a movie that really, really, really thinks it's clever and hip and smart and every few minutes after yet another clever scene (think the shotgun rewind scene) I roll my eyes and let go an audible groan.

I love Ali's line too by the way: as profound as a 14-year-old’s rants, having just discovered “Never Mind the Bollocks.”

Wow, a pompous foreigner thinks he understands our culture, and intends to make a mockery of it. I know what movie I won't be spending ten hard earned dollars to see.
And what I also "love" about this movie is that the two homicidal maniacs are Americans born and bred, but the suburban couple that gets tortured by these two are, foreigners, not that this bothers me in any movies, but it just adds to the overall irony of the director's heavy handed and self aggrandizing "message". No thank you, sadism disguised as satire is still sadism.

Michael Haneke is a tool. He’s a very talented tool (“The Seventh Continent” really did a number on me), but he’s a tool nonetheless.

SPOILERS BELOW FOR ORIGINAL “FUNNY GAMES” (AND THE REMAKE, TOO, I GUESS)

In “Funny Games”, Haneke blows his whole game with the “rewind” scene. At that point, any plan to show audiences the truth about violence completely crumbles. Suddenly, the movie is a bad fantasy using a creaky gimmick. We can see the strings, and nothing is to be taken seriously anymore, including everything that preceded it.

Worse is what Haneke himself has to say about that moment. Many of you probably already know this, but Haneke says that when the heroine shoots her attacker, and the audience cheers, what they’re cheering is a murder. When the film “rewinds” and plays out differently, the audiences’ gasps indicate that they’re realizing they’re own barbarism at cheering for that murder.

Well, no. This statement of Haneke’s reveals a couple of things. One is that he doesn’t seem to realize how films work, particularly the kind of film “Funny Games” is turning inside out. If an audience cheers when the heroine shoots her attacker, they’re doing so because this woman, whose survival they’ve been rooting for, is finally turning the tables on a pair of sadistic murderers. Their gasps at the reversal come not from the realization of their own barbarism, but rather from the realization that she is NOT going to get away after all.

The other thing that Haneke’s statement reveals is that he uses a pretty corrupt definition of “murder”. No reasonable person could call the shooting “murder”; it’s plainly self-defense. If Haneke were to be a helpless witness to a woman being brutalized by two men, two men who were clearly working their way towards murdering her, and he saw the woman manage to kill one of the men and begin to make her escape, would Haneke think to himself, “Oh, I suppose it’s good that she’s escaping, but did she need to kill that man to do so?”

Jim, I reacted much the same as you to Haneke’s original “Funny Games”, though maybe a little stronger. I found it to be profoundly stupid, and happily so, which is what made me offended by it. It was on IFC one night not long after “Cache” had come out, and I thought “Hey, everyone is saying ‘Cache’ is great, I’ll check out one of the dudes earlier movies”. I was bored for a while at everyone’s stupidity, but it slowly dawned on me that he was trying to make a statement (instead of just making a stupid exploitation movie with stupid characters) and that slowly got me angry. I haven’t had this reaction to many movies (Fincher’s “Fight Club” had provoked this same reaction a few years before) but I found “Funny Games” to be both stupid and boring and couldn’t help but laugh when I read some of Haneke’s comments about it. It felt like he was laying the template down for Eli Roth to follow later (and stupider) for his “Hostel” movies.

"Once the show's over, they're the same oblivious, complacent suckers they were when they went in..."

Too true. I love Naomi Watts, but I don’t plan on subjecting myself to the same movie again just because it's in English now. I'm sure it will be just as dumb, and just as happy about it as before.

Jim ---

I wrote about this very thing last week on my blog. I noted that I am torn on the film based on the trailer because the trailer has me thinking and talking about the film, but it also made me want to throw the remote across the room.

The trailer just screams "I can do what Kubrick and Peckinpah did!" From the big red font to the famous aria (I don't remember the name of it, but I remember it from the movie "Diva") used on the soundtrack, to the all white suit he wears, it all just looks like the ordinary torture porn film that really believes it is making some profound statement about American culture (the wealthy, happy, and undeserving, white family in this case). It seems as if Haneke is trying to stand on the shoulders of Peckinpah and Kubrick and by doing so, making himself believe that this is nothing better than "Saw" or "Hostel".

I have never been a fan of "A Clockwork Orange" or "Straw Dogs" and that's what the trailer wants me to think of when I see the film, but since I don't like those movies, I will most likely not see the film. But it has me intrigued because the trailer is interestingly (well) made and has provoked some form of curiosity about the film within me.

The horror genre is my favorite (especially Italian horror) and I have probably seen every Italian horror movie that is possible to see; which are gruesome and cruel films too (especially to women like in the giallo pictures), but I think the difference is that the evil characters never act out of boredom, rather they act out of insanity or some form of possession (something easy on the narrative since the Italian horror filmmakers preferred to focus on style over substance), and the victims are never that innocent to begin with.

I think this is what bothers me so much about movies like "Funny Games" and all the other torture porn movies: the characters seem to be acting out of boredom, and like Ari said, the victims are almost always undeserving of the things being done to them. There is no silly motivation (jealousy or demonic possession or just your basic slasher film excuse: revenge) which allows you to be exhilarated or scared or afraid of the potential violence.

It's never the violence that is the problem, but the intent behind it and it really bugs me (although who am I to put words in the mouth of the filmmakers, but I'll assume for the moment) that they have no intent of making any kind of point except the obvious surface crap about bourgeois complacency and how people who have success should suffer if they focus on themselves (a driving moral "lesson" in torture porn movies) rather than others.

This is essentially a less elegant reiteration of what Ari said when he mentioned that it's sadistic because the people being invaded are "unwilling victims."

But the film has me talking and thinking about it, so it must be doing something right.

I'm not going to see this flick because I find extreme violence in movies abhorrent. I don't need the lesson it seems to be offering. Lots of people do, though, and I hope this movie makes them shine a light on the dark place in their mind where they are compelled to revel in human sadism.

I don't think most fans of the Saw movies are ready to go out and commit actual atrocities, but I don't think atrocities particularly offend them either, when viewed from afar. Perhaps this flick will bring that home to those voyeurs.

Jim, I agree with your assessment of "Natural Born Killers" as a failed turning of the looking glass, but I think "Funny Games" is the real deal and a great success — a mature, important work about violence in movies and, more importantly, how we watch movies.

I needed "Funny Games." The first time I watched it I sought it out as an exercise in "extreme" cinema. It greatly confused me, as it didn't provide the dark jollies I expected it to.

It continued to pervade my thoughts until I realized (years later) why it so haunted my mind: it's truly horrific, and true horror (at least the kind of acts that transpire in this film) isn't any fun.

This was a valuable lesson as I had previously viewed films (and indeed was raised to have this view) as pure entertainment. I'm a late bloomer in all areas of my life, including an appreciation of film. It took a viewing of "Funny Games" at age 18 to precipitate a sense that movies can be far more than a way to kill 2 hours or, as I far more commonly viewed them, forms of pornography, eliciting responses of arousal, dread, adrenaline and laughter.

Yes, "Funny Games" evokes those responses, but surely not in the same, dead-from-the-neck-up way of "NBK," "Baise-Moi" or any other picture that attempts/pretends to comment on its vileness, and especially those that don't. At least that is my experience with it.

Your other post mentioned the "ugly girl" from Porky's 3. One of the several reasons I despise "Hostel" is a joke one of the three young American travelers cracks at an allegedly overweight prostitute's expense.

In including this line, Eli Roth is not commenting on his character's behavior; he too thinks it's a funny crack. Roth acolytes (and their precursors) would do well to watch Funny Games if for no other reason that it will confuse them (like it did me) and may inspire — accidentally or otherwise — introspection.

This all said, I've seen Funny Games thrice now, and I sure as hell don't want to see it again. I've learned what I needed from it, but still hold in high esteem, even if I find wrongheaded the numerous eggs left in plain sight at Sundance as a means to advertise the film.

Honestly, I found myself obsessed with the trailer when it first came out. I found the editing hypnotic and the inclusion of title cards "Daring" and "Dangerous" clever in the suggestion of similarities between the family and their captors. I haven't seen the original, but I am excited for the remake based on an appreciation of craft that I have come to expect from Haneke. That said, I saw The Piano Teacher for the first time last weekend and found it one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen. That doesn't change me wanting to see Funny Games, but now I know what I'm getting into.

And for the record, the only torture porn film I saw was the original Saw, and that was a Halloween screening out of sheer curiosity. After enduring Cary Elwes' performance, I never need to see another one of those. And the gore. Though the original Saw was pretty bloodless as far as I remember.

I've seen this film discussed on other sites today, and somebody somewhere brought up a good point: Is Haneke going to make, say, an Italian version of "Funny Games" because of their love of giallo, or a Japanese version because of "Ichi the Killer" and innumerable others?

I seem to be the only person that actually likes the trailer for the film, which from what I know of the film I thought pitched it absolutely right - it's clearly very violent and hard to watch, but with a slight satirical edge (from memory, there's a line about the value of entertainment that made that element pretty clear). Plus, I thought it was one of the best edited trailer I've seen in a long time, with the use of In The Hall Of The Mountain King perfectly accompanying and pacing the trailer. It works really well.

(And I thought I was the only one that noticed the similarity to the Clockwork Orange trailer - another unpleasantly violent, hard-to-watch film with strong satirical elements.)

I should note that I haven't seen the original (I've only seen two Haneke films - Time of the Wolf, which didn't work for me, and Code Unknown, which I really enjoyed), and the idea of a genuinely shot-by-shot remake by the same director interests me enough to want to see both films for comparison (although whether I'll be able to cope with it, we'll wait and see - I'm normally fine with on-screen violence, but I just can't stomach torture porn, which this sounds like it might get perilously close to).

A Sight and Sound interviewer asked Haneke ten years ago why anyone who didn't get off on watching torture and pain would sit through "Funny Games" (1997). I understand what Haneke says he's tyring to do with the film. But I wonder 1) if those are really his intentions; and 2) if the film really accomplishes them. It's the most simplistic of his films that I've seen -- and it's not nearly as hard to watch as "The Piano Teacher," because the story doesn't grow out human characters; it's a purely abstract conceptual exercise.

The comparison to "A Clockwork Orange" is a rewarding one to consider. Kubrick was reportedly appalled that audiences laughed along with the violence and the rape. He thought "Singin' in the Rain," for example, made the scene all that more cruel, sadistic, and unbearable. But people laughed at the fish-eye lens shots of the victims and Alex's callous attitude. After copycat crimes in England, Kubrick felt his experiment had failed and he withdrew the film from circulation there. It did not become available in Great Britain until after Kubrick's death.

But "A Clockwork Orange" was attempting something far more complex and difficult than "Funny Games." It's about free will, rehabilitation and punishment for committing transgressive acts. Society has to protect itself from violent criminals like Alex, but if free will is eliminated, is it still a free society? Kubrick's film may have failed (morally, thematically -- not commercially), but I think it's far more ambitious and sophisticated than "Funny Games."

Comparisons to Hitchcock, Kubrick, Peckinpah and De Palma may be quite enlightening. How does "Funny Games" emulate their techniques or goals, and how does it differ? Or "Saw" or "Hostel" or any other horror movie that winks at the audience and plays on their expectations? What, if anything, makes "Funny Games" significantly different? Some people are horrified by it; others are equally horrified by "Hostel," and for the same reasons (although one film adds the element of gore and the other doesn't). And some people laugh at "Funny Games" (either because they identify with the torturers, or because they see the whole thing as "just a movie," a "funny game"), just as some laugh at "Hostel" or "Saw."

The trailer to this one was offputting in every way--down to the intertitles titles & crass irony of the music ("Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies", IIRC). But the main warning sign for me is that it had a full-length profile in the _New York Times Magazine_, which I've come to learn is often the sign of a film, TV show or record album where (1) the company has the jitters about how to market it; and (2) is probably more interesting to talk about & do a profile about than actually experience as a viewer/listener. (Remember the lengthy piece on the _Psycho_ remake that appeared there?)

Every year at Halloween I see people dressed as droogs. It'll be interesting to see how many Peters and Pauls we see.

I can see people taking Kubrick's movie the wrong way for a couple of reasons. One, time has rendered its aesthetic as appealing kitsch. Also Alex is a likable anti-hero; one easily identified with. He comes across that way in the book, too. It's endearing the way he refers to himself as our "humble narrator" and "friend."

I like Jim's point that "Funny Games" comes off as a conceptual exercise — I think it is that — but I wouldn't go so far as to deny its characters humanity, even if they are not particularly well developed. But humanity is inherent, right?

Anyway, we get from the opening car scene, where the parents play a fun guessing game, that the family gets along well, is ostensibly happy, well adjusted and certainly not deserving (does that matter?) of what happens to them.

A key scene for me *spoiler alert* is the first death we overhear and then see the aftermath. The static camera observes the blood on the wall, the Nascar on TV (perhaps too schematic) and the soft sobbing of the bereaved. Here Haneke does two things: he kills the unkillable (children are usually off-limits to violence). He also makes us watch not the act of violence, but the reaction of others to it, besides a quick weep and a graveside scene. Many movies move on very quickly after a human being loses his life. This one waits. It forces us to deal with the moment.

If people choose to laugh or give another inappropriate reaction to the scene, it says more about them than Haneke's set-up.

I love the use of knives in "Funny Games." They are at once a household item, used for very simple and practical purposes; weapons that can torture and kill a person; and filmic devices that conjure expectations in the audience.

"Funny Games" has no likable anti-hero singing familiar tunes, nor appealing pop art. It does have incongruous music at odd junctures, like hearing Beethoven through a synthesizer. No dancing Jesus and vaginas like dangerous, wide-open maws (when Alex kills the cat lady), but golf balls and eggs.

Perhaps having Peter re-introduce himself by rolling the golf ball was made in poor judgment, as it is a device that undermines the alleged premises of the film; i.e. it's a very standard moment of dread whose purpose seems to be merely to invoke dread.

Maybe it is the gore that separates "Saw" and movies of its ilk and "Funny Games." When Tim Roth gets stabbed, we see it off screen, his yelps are more than enough information. If we saw the knife enter his flesh and tear it open, the effect (and the tone of the film) would be different. When Dario Argento showed us a still beating heart, all I thought was "What a disgusting and odd special effect." Nothing about the poor young woman whose innards were suddenly on public view.

Perhaps I am ascribing too much to Haneke's reputation in my approach and reading of the film. I did not watch "Saw" with any expectations other than twists, turns and special effects. "Hostel" I watched so I could validate my hatred of it. I don't think either of those two films has any interest other than "entertainment" and a means for its movie-loving makers wallow in a macabre playground of their own creation. Having written that, maybe there is less distance between them and "Funny Games."

After reading through the comments, I checked on IMDB.COM to see what others were saying. There, too, comparisons to Hostel and Saw came up. One person commented on the original Funny Games: "I've only seen the original and it's not quite as brutal as I hoped." Clearly, some people will watch the moving expecting and/or hoping to see brutality for the sake of brutality, while others will watch expecting to see it as satire.

That begs the question: does the director determine the tone/content/purpose of a film, or do the viewers? That is, is purpose determined on a person to person basis, and, if so, can this individualization of the meaning trump the director's intent? For that mater, can the viewer's individualized response create meaning where none was intended. If so (and I certainly think this can and indeed does happen) is this trumping/individualization of the film legitimate?

andy: You're really getting to the heart of things here -- starting with the simple fact that a director's (stated) intentions don't necessarily correlate with what a movie actually does, or how it plays. (I thought "Midnight Express" was basically torture porn in 1978 -- long before that term was coined -- and that the audience response confirmed that. But the same people who cheered when Brad Davis when he chomped off a guy's tongue and spit it out in slow motion claimed it was simply a "powerful" story. They didn't see it as exploitation at all. Hey, it got Oscar nominations.)

As I know from the experience of booking a movie theater for a few years, every audience (and every individual) does not see a movie the same way. Sometimes you can feel an audience will almost imperceptibly turn on a film, while at the very next showing in the same room the crowd will be totally with it. I described my horror in Toronto last year when I felt the huge festival audience around me had a completely different response to the ending of "Atonement" than I thought was appropriate (and, the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was probably the movie's fault as much as theirs).

Also, I saw "Margot at the Wedding" with an audience that didn't laugh. At all. I don't understand that (lack of) response. But I also know people who are too horrified by "Dr. Strangelove" to find it funny.

Watching "No Country for Old Men" again tonight, this scene caught my attention in light of the discussion here. Make of it what you will.

Ed Tom Bell: My god Wendell, it's just all out war. I can't think any other word for it. Who are these people? Here last week they found this couple out in California. They rent out rooms to old people, kill 'em, bury 'em in the yard, cash their Social Security checks. They'd torture 'em first. I don't know why. Maybe their television set was broken. And this went on until, here, I quote "Neighbors were alerted when a man ran from the premises wearing only a dog collar." You can't make up such a thing as that. I dare you to even try. But that's what it took, you notice, to get somebody's attention. Digging graves in the back yard didn't bring any.

(Wendell laughs uncomfortably)

Ed Tom Bell: Well, that's alright. I laugh myself sometimes. Ain't a whole lot else you can do.

----------
It always seemed to me that the laughter during truly disturbing movies, like those of Haneke, or Lynch, is an uncomfortable one. One you usually only hear from the male members of the audience. "Margot at the Wedding" is pretty horrifying, but it's also intentionally funny. I think Haneke's film is just horrifying though, not funnny in the least bit, intentionally or otherwise.

Watching the 97 and 08 trailer at the same time is fascinating. They're almost exactlty the same for the first thirty seconds...

The comparisons to Hostel and Saw are absurd. Was anyone truly horrified by either of those films? Both encouraged shallow viewing. Every murder in Saw is a gag. Every kill in Hostel, a gag. The Asian woman having her eye burned out in Hostel was a gross-out moment, not a time for reflection. Not a truly horrific moment.

Irreversible and Funny Games are operating on a completely different level. The filmmakers are not laughing at the characters, as they are in Hostel and Saw. No one can watch the rape in Irreversible and giggle about it. No one can watch that Nascar long shot after the first Funny Games murder and say, "Gosh, I'm really having a grand ol' time at the movies."

Even Saving Private Ryan (certainly a great film) had violence gags. Both Irreversible and Funny Games are more consistent with their treatment of violence and provide the level of respect and horror that it deserves.

Nick: You beat me to it! I was planning to quote Ed Tom Bell in a follow-up post. (Probably still will.) From an earlier piece I did on "NCFOM":

When Sheriff Bell reads a modern horror story from the morning newspaper, his deputy Wendell (Garrett Dillahunt) stifles an involuntary guffaw. "That's all right. I laugh myself sometimes," Bell muses. "There ain't a whole lot else you can do."

Bell isn't talking about his job, and he's not being fatalistic. Unlike Chigurh, he's human, and he's seen enough human nature to know that we laugh in recognition of horror and absurdity, maybe even in the moment we find ourselves on the brink of the abyss. It's not an inappropriate response, and contrary to the claims of some of the Coens' critics, it doesn't automatically signal approval of murder, or denial of responsibility. Chigurh himself doesn't laugh. Laughter requires a form of empathy that he doesn't possess.

Billy: I'll quote John Huston's Noah Cross in "Chinatown": "Most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything."

"I Stand Alone" and "Irreversible" are very funny at times (especially the bilious inner monologue of the main character in the former), and that doesn't lessen their horror at all. (I also think they're good movies, while "Funny Games" is just a sterile, self-conscious game.) I thought "Hostel" was just deadly dull -- but some people were indeed horrified by it. Check out the reviews on RottenTomatoes -- by critics who liked it and hated it. One of my favorite quotes is from the BBC: "Beyond its 'How far can I go?' attitude to violence, 'Hostel' has no reason to exist."

I wouldn't argue that "Funny Games" and "Irreversible" (two extremely different movies) work entirely on the same levels as "Hostel," or on the same levels as each other. But the primary thing "Hostel," "Saw" and "Funny Games" share is the basic situation of people being held captive and tortured -- for reasons you may, or may not, discover later.

People are capable of experiencing humor (and horror) on many different levels. Laughter can create empathy or distance, pull you into a movie or pop you out of your state of "suspended disbelief." But I will be very surprised if people don't laugh at "Funny Games" (which also has intentionally funny moments) -- especially when Paul addresses comments to the audience and reminds us that it's "just a movie," not something we can really get invested in. That long shot you mention isn't my idea of a grand ol' time at the movies, but I guarantee you some people will "enjoy" it. Not in the sense you describe, but they will appreciate the concept of the shot, or they will laugh at how uncomfortable they feel, or at the way they know the movie is toying with them, or for some other reason. With enough ironic distance, you're capable of laughing at anything.

"Once the show's over, they're the same oblivious, complacent suckers they were when they went in..."

Wow, you are one presumptuous man. I wasn't aware that you were the grand and mighty arbiter of peoples' thoughts.Yes, every single person who goes to see "Funny Games" will come out oblivious and complacent suckers. Why? Because Jim Emerson said they would.

JE: Not really. But that IS what happens with the theater audience shown IN Brian De Palma's "Hi, Mom!" -- the movie I was writing about. As for "Funny Games," I believe I said I expected a range of reactions. So, who's presuming what?

I think Funny Games is a good film, but I'm not sure if it works as well in a world with Hostels and Saws where the audience doesn't really care if the good guys get away in the end. The 1997 film was commenting on a different type of film and relies on the audience wanting the family to triumph in the end. The audience is supposed to be outraged when the family doesn't survive and then the question is, How can you be outraged?

By watching their torture, you are complicit. How then can you be upset when they don't get away? Is it morally wrong to kill off fake good guy characters? If so, isn't it morally wrong that they were tortured at all? How does setting them free in the end make it OK that they were tortured in the first place?

About Irreversible, I wasn't saying that it's impossible to laugh during such a film. Certainly, uncomfortable giggles are going to be a part of that viewing experience. I was merely drawing a distinction between the purpose of the brutality in those films versus the purpose of the brutality in Saw/Hostel. One set of films is intended to disturb and get at a larger thesis, where as the others are mere set pieces designed to tittilate (though I'd argue that such films are more about make-up gags than the joy of human suffering).

Naturally, Irreversible and Funny Games are going to attract people who only want to delight in human suffering. But that shouldn't change the intent of the films themselves. Similarly, there are people that will watch any number of thoughtful dramas simply to see nudity and sex.

But as I was saying, Funny Games maybe doesn't work so well in a world with Saws and Hostels and audiences that are unashamed in their glee for good-guy torture. And of course the film isn't going to work on those it really needs to work on. Only the ones who already agree with the sentiment will really notice or care what the filmmaker is saying, but isn't that the case for a lot of works of art? Maybe Haneke isn't changing the world with his film, but that shouldn't diminish his attempt.

Why are you comparing "Funny Games" to torture porn? That is a recent fad which didn't exist when this film was originally made. Haneke's real purpose was bulldozing the abominable "yuppie family scared by a psycho" genre. There's nothing wrong with the American "Funny Games"... but the fact that it arrives ten years late when the movies he was criticising aren't made anymore.

Haneke is not showing torture porn, but placing the plot of 80s and 90s films like "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", "Fear" or "The River Wild" in a context of real life. Now, real life-like violence has been adopted by the torture porn genre, so the new version of "Funny Games" is dated in that sense, but its message still applies to those "old" films. Nobody who watches this film will ever take a "home invasion" film seriously.

My only gripe with the film is that the ending spells everything out for audience (though oddly nobody has mentioned it yet! Maybe Haneke was right...): we have two killers from a movie attacking a real family. That explains the "rewind" scene, which is Haneke's way to show how these films use arbitrary script contrivances so the family can't stop the killer (usually resorting to the "they didn't kill him enough!" cheap trick) until they find the last minute impromptu weapon we could see briefly in first scenes of the film (the knife in the boat) which will provide a deus ex machina satisfactory ending.

Having seen Funny Games 5 years ago in its original form, I thought back then that it was a thoroughly morally disgusting experience, and I hated the filmmaker for making it. In retrospect, though, I thought it was somewhat clever and enlightning in some respects (especially in the way it portrays violence and in the fact that the "accomplice" relationship between viewer and torturer is forced upon the viewer), even though I still think it's not an enjoyable experience.

However, I think most of the argumentation here is beside the point. When Jim is saying that Rear Window, Psycho and Hi, Mom are more effective ways of saying the same thing, he's obviously talking about the way those movies speak to himself, and to us, who take movies very seriously, spend time talking about them on blogs and analyze them in such a fashion that makes the Haneke stance on violence very old-hat for us.

I'd really like to know, though, if the occasional movie-goer will find that the post-modern study on violence and expectations in Rear Window or Psycho is really more thought provoking than the one in Funny Games. Haneke's movie has a clear, well defined stance on the subject, and it can't be ignored by the spectator. Hitchcock's movies, for examples, are not, on the surface, about this subject, and the point he's making or even the subject he's exploring could be easily altogether missed by people who just go to the movies to be entertained.

So, really, which movie would be the most effective on the masses?

I agree with Jonathan Lapper in calling this an "eye-roller." It just thinks it's so clever, that it's so much more erudite than other grade-Z films that depict torture and objectify people. But, since there are a couple of asides to the audience about it, Haneke thinks he's making a profund artistic statement, as opposed to really pretentious torture porn. It's dishonest, it revels in what it claims to satirize.

Jim, the American "Funny Games" deserves it's own essay in the "Big Lie" section of your site.

One thing that needs to be mentioned, which very few people have mentioned (Sam touched on it), is that virtually all of the violence AND nudity in "Funny Games" occurs OFF-SCREEN.

Which is why I find direct comparisons (as opposed to direct contrasts) to films like "Saw" and "Hostel" completely absurd. In those films, the entire purpose - even when they wink or joke or "satirize" - is to see the actually acts of violence.

"Funny Games" does the exact opposite, which will naturally provoke an opposite reaction.

For example, there is a scene where Naomi Watts' character is forced to strip naked in front of everyone. As those of us who've seen the film know, we never see any nudity in the scene - the entire stripping scene is shot with only a close-up of Watts' face. We don't get the expected payoff of gratuitous nudity.

Nor do we see any of the two intruders' major acts of violence toward their victims.

Now, two people sitting behind me at the screening loudly whispered during the stripping scene, "Take it off!" And they were disappointed when they didn't get to see any skin. Based on other comments they made during the film, it would be safe to assume that they would be part of the "Hostel" audience; as such, they were disappointed with the "violence" in the film. They got the exact opposite of what they expected.

Others have mentioned "A Clockwork Orange" - and that's fair enough, since the acts of violence actually DO take place on-screen.

In "Funny Games," they do not. In fact, during the one major exception - when the victim triumphantly turns the tables on her captors - that moment of sudden, extreme violence is immediately taken away from us. So we don't even get to hold on to that catharsis.

I'm particularly bothered by what Kevin Olson posted, asserting that "Funny Games" was like "all the other torture porn movies." He assumes that the movie, in its supposed "violence," is merely attacking bouregois complacency, when that's not the point at all. The two killers' "boredom" is exactly the point - they're doing what they're doing to be entertained. But unlike "Hostel" and such, we're not asked to join in on that directly - instead of seeing the kid get shot, we see Michael Pitt in the kitchen, leaving the TV on in the other room while he makes himself a sandwich. Even the first act of violence - Tim Roth getting knocked down with the golf club - takes place off-screen.

And the tools used by other "home-invasion films" (or suspense/horror films in general) are subverted as well. At the beginning, we see the obviously foreshadowed knife in the boat, and sure enough, at the end, Naomi Watts finds it and begins to cut herself loose...only the killers merely take the knife and throw it in the lake, flippantly discarding our own expectations.

Now, you can argue about whether or not that is clever and thought-provoking or just plan stupid, but my point is that the film fulfills the exact opposite of any of the "torture porn" genre. To say the film is, like "Saw," an exercise in sadism is grossly missing the point; if it's sadistic at all, it's sadistic toward those who get off on watching gratuitous, inhumane violence - not toward sadistic toward the victims themselves.

JE: Great points, Chris. I get into some of these in my review. While "Saw," "Hostel," and "Funny Games" all concentrate to some extent on psychological terror and physical violence, "FG" definitely emphasizes the pain of the aftermath, rather than the gore itself. (I thought of the torture scene with the cop in "Reservoir Dogs" which does something similar -- his ear is severed off-screen, but afterwards people will swear that they actually saw it. The impact may be even greater for being left to the imagination.)

"Once the show's over, they're the same oblivious, complacent suckers they were when they went in..."

Again, if this statement is solely referring to "Hi, Mom!" then why don't you just end the sentence with a period? You include that insinuating ellipses...

You write " Or will they feel that they've learned a real lesson about cinematic violence -- like the dilettantish white liberal theatergoers in the National Intellectual Television documentary, "Be Black, Baby!"

Where else have I heard you call someone "dilettantish" in the same dismissive manner?

"I felt like I'd passed Haneke's "test" without knowing it. I didn't need it. But Haneke's statement made it easier for me to go back and finish the movie (which I did the next day). I'd felt like I was being taught an abusive and presumptuous (and rather dillettantish) lesson about violence as entertainment that I'd already thought through at least as much as Haneke had."

Who do you think you're fooling?

JE: Nobody. But you're certainly free to draw your own conclusions.

Chris ---

Of course I assumed because I haven't seen the movie. I was basing everything off of the trailer and I was specifically reacting to the trailer for the film. A trailer usually hints to the viewer what the film will possess.

At the beginning of the trailer I noticed that the film was not Rated R for any kind of sex or nudity, but rape, on or offscreen, can still be distasteful and result in an uneasy feeling if the film only exists to preach to us about how immoral we all out for actually wanting to see the rape and the violence and the nudity.

I don't care about any of that. To me that is not what horror is. We differ on this, but I had to assume because I hadn't seen the film.

In the trailer when you see Michael Pitt pulling off the pants of Naomi Watts in front of her husband and son, you usually assume things about the film.

I equated it to all torture porn movies and perhaps that was wrong, but to me the trailer played no different than something like "The Hills Have Eyes" where an innocent family is undeserving of the torture they receive.

To me (based on the trailer) these films are the same.

Sorry if I bummed you out.

Kevin:

Jim has touched on this as well, but I think what you brought up - the message communicated by the trailer vs. the actual text of the film - is an interesting peripheral point to all of this.

How is the trailer for "Funny Games" actually being used? Was Haneke involved in creating the trailer, or any of the marketing effort?

Or: Regardless of who was involved in marketing the film, what was the genesis of it? Was it simply a misunderstanding of the film, and an attempt to capitalize on the built-in audience of horror movies - or, more specifically, torture porn movies? Did someone assuming that it was one of those films and casually lumped it in with them?

Or did they DELIBERATELY frame the film as something it's not, so as to draw in specific audiences and provoke a certain reaction from those who went in expecting something different?

I'd be interested to find out.

AHX - WTF?

It's just, like, Jim's opinions, dude (with which I happen to agree). Time to dismount from that high horse.