Funny Games is a film written and directed by Michael Haneke, it is a shot for shot remake
of an Austrian film of the same name by the same filmmaker.
It's a film about a family, George and Anne and their son George Jr, or Georgie.
They go to their vacation home on the lake and meet Peter and Paul, two well mannered
young men who begin to hold the family hostage.
The film largely serves as a commentary on violence, more specifically the way violence
is portrayed in media, and why I believe Haneke wanted to make an English language remake,
for as we all know American media is no stranger to violence.
But for me, that's not what makes Funny Games such an interesting film, it's the way that
the film is crafted, and the way it toys with genre cliches.
In case it wasn't clear, there will be spoilers for this film, so consider yourself warned.
On the surface it seems like a pretty straightforward thriller.
Insert nuclear American family, complete with a boat, a nice house, and even the family
dog.
Then introduce two psychopaths bent on tormenting them for seemingly no apparent reason, and
you've got all the pieces of a standard thrille.
But the ways the film stands out are plentiful and worth discussing.
The first thing that you'll probably notice if you've seen the film is its incredibly
slow pace.
There are several incredibly long unbroken takes throughout but even disregarding those
scenes, the average shot is much longer than what you'd normally see in this kind of film.
But every scene in the film is serving a larger purpose which allows for quite the payoff
by the end.
One example would be the cell phone.
We first see it in a scene with Anne feeding the dog and preparing dinner, what we don't
know yet at this point in the film is that this one cell phone is their only way of communicating
directly with the outside world.
Never in the film do you see a landline phone, a computer, or even just another cellphone.
Their one chance of calling the police or a friend is taken away in the first 15 minutes
when Peter knocks the phone into the sink.
It's only after the next gruelling hour that we find out how significant that moment was.
There are a lot of beautiful sets up in the film's script with payoff moments for those
who stay until the end, which is admittedly hard.
It's a film that goes against the idea that a movie must be entertainment, and instead
utilizes the medium to create something truly uncomfortable, at times unbearably so.
Film can be a portal to reality or to fantasy and different films have different reasons
for wanting to achieve one or the other, or more frequently a balance between the two.
But Haneke made the conscious choice to make this film feel as real and tense as possible,
and he uses many techniques to achieve this, one being silence.
There is no original score to the film.
With the exception of the opening and ending credits, there is no music set to the film
as an underscore, the only time you hear music is when there's music playing in a scene,
which isn't often.
Music is a great tool for stirring emotions and setting tone, and in that way the absence
of music can accomplish something even greater.
One of my favorite scenes that illustrates this is pretty early in the film.
We see George and his son fixing up the boat, and what do we hear?
Their voices, the water rocking the boat, the birds in the distance.
The scene cuts but we return a few scenes later after Peter and Paul talk with Anne.
What do we hear now?
The same as before but now with the dog barking and then...silence.
When the film steers into its darker scenes your mind longs for the music cue to relieve
some tension.
Just when you want the underscore to rush in and for the camera to cut - there it stays.
Silent.
And unmoving.
A quick cut or backdrop of music can help distance us from what we're seeing, they're
all cues to remind us that we're just watching a movie, it's not real.
Funny Games doesn't give you that same luxury, it makes you wade through this dread right
alongside the characters.
It's why Paul breaks the 4th wall several times in the film.
A 4th wall break is a tongue-in-cheek way to acknowledge that a character in a film
is aware of us as an audience, sometimes, like in Deadpool, it's used for comedic effect;
in Funny Games it just furthers its agenda, of forcing you through these events in as
real a way as possible.
So one might think to develop this even further that you'd have to show any of the violence
clear and center, right?
If the purpose of this film is to involve us in as visceral a way as possible, certainly
when the violence shows up we should experience that violence in as visceral of a way as possible,
but the film does the exact opposite.
Every scene of violence either happens off camera, like what happened with their dog
Lucky; or is filmed in such a way that we don't really see much, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it
sort of thing.
Because as any student of horror knows, the best way to keep an audience scared is to
make them use their imagination.
Remember how Cloverfield had most people on the edge of their seat until we got a good
look at the monster?
How many people think the Saw movies are genuinely terrifying and not just a gore-fest?
Whether we like it or not humans are natural problem solvers, we recognize patterns or
subtext and our brains can fill in what we're not directly being given.
So when a scene of violence happens off-camera our brains fill in those gaps, and what our
minds conjure up is something that's unique to us and it's why it works more effectively
than a director trying to fill in that gap for you, because what scares one person might
not scare another.
That kind of visual ambiguity allows for more people to have the intended experience.
Another way that the film stands out, certainly in the genre, is its desregard for the rules.
Anyone familiar with the Scream franchise knows that they are pretty strict rules to
follow in the horror genre, sometimes because they work well and other times because they've
just become embedded in the genre over time as tried and true cliches.
When watching a film like Funny Games, you're constantly waiting for the tables to turn
to follow more of the standard procedure.
And some of the most tense scenes are the ones toying with these expectations.
As an audience we think "Great, the kid got out at least!"
only to be defeated when he runs into Paul.
But of course there's no way he's in any real danger, he's a kid, movies almost never kill
the kid but then...
Near the beginning there's a scene where Paul borrows one of George's clubs to try it out,
also taking one of his golf balls.
Shortly after the scene with George and his son on the boat they're all together in the
house, the first blow has been struck and the games are moving along.
Paul wants to play a game, he pulls out the ball and asks George what
it is.
And
after all the torment and torture, all the mind games and lies, Peter and Paul seem to
be leaving...?
They're gone.
At last.
And so they do the only sensible thing they can do, Anne leaves the house to try and find
help while George does everything he can to get the cell phone working again to call the
police.
And just when we think they've gone for good...
We feel tricked, betrayed by our own hope.
Of course they didn't leave, that's not how this would play out, but why couldn't it be?
It's like Haneke is punishing us for that innocent hope, that they'll all just make
it out alive.
And it's what makes this next scene all the more interesting.
Peter and Paul are back, playing more games yet, forcing Anne to choose who between her
and George will get the quick and easy gun, or the slow and painful knife.
She makes a play and bam, just like that, Peter's dead.
And we think FINALLY some vengence for these people, it's about damn time.
Like Last House on the Left we're ready for some payback, these people have been through
so much for no reason other than to please these sadistic maniacs, finally the tables
have turned for our heroes.
But that's when Haneke gives you the biggest slap in the face I've ever seen in a film,
Paul literally rewinds the movie.
It never happened.
Maybe it's some glimpse of an alternate timeline?
Maybe we're meant to disregard the false reality the film proposes, maybe it is all just a
movie, even to the characters?
But regardless of the how or why it leaves us back where we were before, angry with ourselves
for getting our hopes up and right back to watching these poor characters go through
even more hell.
At this point, there's no more hope left, you know it's only a matter of time for the
inevitable to happen.
And we end the film roughly where we started, with Peter and Paul finding their next victims.
So that's Funny Games, in a not-so-small nutshell.
I think films like this are important not only because they challenge the medium, they
defy the idea that movies should be fun, and give you a different perspective, but because
it can offer you something you don't see much of elsewhere, unless you've been watching
Game of Thrones and are used to the heroes getting killed.
Films like this are almost never critical darlings and they never will be, too many
people just don't want to watch something so hopeless and malicious but it is a reality
for some whether we turn a blind eye to it or not.
Things like this and much worse happen in the real world every day, and if nothing else
it serves as a reminder to appreciate our own fragility.
One might argue what the point of it all is, and I think that's it.
To remind us that anything can happen at any time, one minute we might be happy heading
to our nice home for vacation and the next we might be held hostage by two psychopaths
with a golf club.
Thank you for watching, and I'll see you next time.