Cinematic Provocateur

Unfortunately due to it’s limited stay at the Oriental and my inability to post this sooner, some of you may have missed the opportunity to see Funny Games. Some of you have at least most likely heard of it. This film remake of the original 1997 version by the same writer/director Michael Haneke had sparked a lot of controversy and had a lot of people talking. While some may have found it an un-necessary remake of it’s Austrian predecessor, as it had been remade shot for shot, Haneke stated that he had always thought the story an American appropriation.
The film is about a family of three traveling to their lakeside cottage for the weekend or week maybe. After they arrive they’re visited by two young men, very proper and dressed all in white, also dawning white gloves. These young men seem to be very polite at first but as the film progresses they begin to test the families limits and later we find out they have a whole different plan altogether. They take the family hostage and force them into humiliating and sometimes violent little “games,” eventually making them a bet that by the following morning they will be dead.
Haneke, also known for his film Cache (Hidden), states that this film is a commentary on the audience’s obsession with violence, setting up the question for each viewer to ask themselves, “why am I watching this?” However, unlike other films with similar content such as the Saw movies or Hostel, this film isn’t concerned with the on screen gore tactic as Haneke is out to shatter your soul and emotions. Some critics have dismissed this film calling it “torture porn” but as far as blood, there’s very little, and sex or nudity, nonexistent. Sorry if I spoiled that for anyone. Haneke pulls this film off with a kind of artistry in that it skips all the mainstream horror kicks and goes straight for the shear terror. I personally have always felt that a good “horror” film may not even be one within the horror genre, but one that makes the viewer truly uncomfortable and leaves no desire to ever see it again.
Allow me to quickly plug another film, widely unknown, that was made with the same intentions. It’s a 2002 french independent film by Gaspar Noe called Irreversible. This is by far one of the most shocking, almost impossible to watch, films I’d ever seen from it’s brutal rape scene to intense assault on a man’s face via fire extinguisher. However, this film also challenges the borders and poses the question, “why do we watch movies?” The story is told similar to that in Memento in that it goes in reverse chronological order, thus making the end (beginning of the story) more tragic and is shot with almost entirely with a hand held camera (= seizure) What’s also important about this independent film, and films like Funny Games, is that it presents a dose of the harshness of reality. It doesn’t soften up it’s material like most mainstream, Hollywood movies would.
So ultimately I’m saying that independent cinema and film makers, such as we’ve seen with films like Reservoir Dogs and Tarantino, are able to push the envelope and make artistic statements and commentaries in ways that Hollywood could never. I think it also says something for the audiences that choose to see these kinds of films as well. They’re not for everyone, but for those who enjoy critiquing film and looking at the medium as one would a painting, these films come with my highest of recommendation. These two films “look at the unlookable and are literally unforgettable.”