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Robotron wrote:I recently saw the original because of the publicity for the remake, and I'm curious as to how this is anymore sophisticated then, say, Scream. The horror genre has always been one of the most consistently self-reflexive, and aside from an overtness that is usually present in big budget Hollywood films with a sense of humor that this film lacked, I don't see anything unique about it.

Since watching Funny Games, I have never been able to watch any film with violence in the same light. What Haneke was able to do, for me at least, was to show how seriously screwed up violence really is. I cannot watch a film, like Live Free or Die Hard (just an example of a recent action film I saw), where characters are continually being killed off without thinking "wait, they just killed someone... isn't that wrong?".
Very few horror films really show the outcomes (or dwell on them, I guess) which seem to be Haneke's point. Plus, despite all of the "4th wall breaking" moments, I have never been so terrified just from the atmosphere that seemed to radiate into the theater due to the soberingly realistic tone. I have never seen a horror film where the antagonists are "real people" and the victims don't fight back, somewhat accepting their deaths.

all in all, I'd say the difference between Funny Games and, let's say Scream, is that Scream is meant to be entertaining and Funny Games isn't. With each sadistic death in Scream we (the audience) becomes more bloodthirsty, wanting to see what's next, knowing that the 'main character' is going to live. With Funny Games we are continually told that these characters are going to die, and we watch hoping they wont. It's the difference between being scared and feeling dread, one's 'fun' the other's not.

Cold Bishop wrote:For starters, the complete contempt for its target audience. Scream played for teenagers and horror fans who like a good- and to judge by the sequels and other successful horror films, not-so-good - bloody slasher film (And as far as the self-reflexivity goes, I never felt it rose above the level of just being clever). Funny Games plays to the same people, but wants them ultimately to feel ashamed about wanting to see this type of movie. To some degrees, its a satire.

I guess your patience for the film depends on how successful you feel such a method is, and how valid you feel "attacking" your audience is. Personally, in the age of the SAW franchises, even if such a method doesn't work, and it just ends with people walking out of the theater pissed-off, completely missing the point of the film, and feeling it was just some pretentious b.s. (and I suspect we will see many IMDB comments like that) I still feel the target audience deserves the lashing.

The contempt obviously makes it less entertaining, which is probably the only thing that makes it an "art" film. Making an audience feeling ashamed while providing ideas at the same level as what they digest while being entertained is a pretty worthless and pretentious venture.

miless wrote:Since watching Funny Games, I have never been able to watch any film with violence in the same light. What Haneke was able to do, for me at least, was to show how seriously screwed up violence really is. I cannot watch a film, like Live Free or Die Hard (just an example of a recent action film I saw), where characters are continually being killed off without thinking "wait, they just killed someone... isn't that wrong?".
Very few horror films really show the outcomes (or dwell on them, I guess) which seem to be Haneke's point. Plus, despite all of the "4th wall breaking" moments, I have never been so terrified just from the atmosphere that seemed to radiate into the theater due to the soberingly realistic tone. I have never seen a horror film where the antagonists are "real people" and the victims don't fight back, somewhat accepting their deaths.

all in all, I'd say the difference between Funny Games and, let's say Scream, is that Scream is meant to be entertaining and Funny Games isn't. With each sadistic death in Scream we (the audience) becomes more bloodthirsty, wanting to see what's next, knowing that the 'main character' is going to live. With Funny Games we are continually told that these characters are going to die, and we watch hoping they wont. It's the difference between being scared and feeling dread, one's 'fun' the other's not.

The way you describe this film's effect on you, it sounds like it had a significantly retarding one. Drama is inherently exploitative, it always has been, and it always will be. This idea has been a theme if filmmaking for a very long time, and it will likely be one for years to come, and it has been explored much more intelligently and insightfully then this movie managed. Brutality is not profundity.

It doesn't take a skilled artist to provoke an audience via smug contempt, it only takes a provocateur. There are few things more insulting than a film that wants to teach a lesson to the audience, especially one as patronizing as this. Heneke doesn't trust the audience, and then he also wants to scold them. There is nothing disturbing in Funny Games beyond the ugly emptiness of its mere existence. I am trying really hard to stay out of this but Funny Games is abhorrent.

And if anyone responds with some punk rock shit that "A response like that means the film did it's job!"-- spare me. Any film that claims to be self-supplying its own bulletproof defense is immediately suspect.

I just think that it's important to raise these issues. It is familiar ground with Haneke (Fragments and Benny's Video in particular) and I don't think it's his best (that would have to go to Time of the Wolf, in my opinion) at dealing with these issues of violence.

does this warrant an english remake... well... I think that it should have been originally made in English. Europeans already know about how terrible violence is. American's seem to be the prime target for this film.

In the cinema tonight the trailer for this extremely retarded looking piece of nonsense provoked boos and laughter from the audience.

An utterly silly-looking film.

domino harvey wrote:It doesn't take a skilled artist to provoke an audience via smug contempt, it only takes a provocateur. There are few things more insulting than a film that wants to teach a lesson to the audience, especially one as patronizing as this. Heneke doesn't trust the audience, and then he also wants to scold them.

I personally find the crap that Hollywood feeds its mainstream audience no less insulting or patronizing, and the audience just loves to swallow it down. If Haneke needs to use these same methods to reach an audience who would otherwise turn up it's noses to anything that has a "message" regarding there viewing habits, fine. I feel they'd be much better off being scolded by a film like this, than having there appetite for violence reinforced by the latest Saw or Hostel. At least, with Funny Games, there's the possibility someone will have a response like Miless and be better off that way.

Personally, provocateur as a pejorative means nothing to me anymore. Artists have been doing this from the surrealists to Baudelaire to before. To me, what exactly you're being a provocateur for is what's important, and find this film at the minimum has reasonable intentions (as condescending you may find the means it gets across its message to be).

Robotron wrote:Drama is inherently exploitative, it always has been, and it always will be.

Fine... but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to evolve the art form to outgrow some of its worst habits, which I find pointless exhibitions of violence to be.

Who decides what's pointless? Haneke? It serves his purposes here.

Thomas Clay's superficially similar The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael is vastly richer and more profound than the original version of this. I agree with you on the provocateur thing though. But that's exactly why Haneke turns me off for the most part--because his sense of moral agency is so arrested and underdeveloped. Only rarely does he evidence any wisdom or genuine understanding, as in the great Code Inconnu and the less great but still devastating Benny's Video. Still, the original Funny Games was infinitely preferable to his wretched, obnoxious Seventh Continent.

Oh, and the reason Scream works is because it makes its appeal right on the popular level. It doesn't condescend to its audience or its form. It doesn't lecture in other words and it doesn't need to. Yes, obviously it is smarmy and pseudo-hip but so is its audience. So was I when I watched it (and, yes, still am, I'm sure). And, yeah, people had a good time as opposed to the pissed-off bad time they had at Funny Games but that latter experience does not mean that the latter is the better or more observant, profound or true film. It seems pretty damn easy to me to pulverize someone into a stupor with a heavy handed moralistic lesson (and Haneke is nothing if not a good old fashioned moralist--just check out his comments on the pernicious influence of TV for proof of that); that's indication of nothing. It's much harder to insinuate subtle distinctions in the minds of audiences who would otherwise never be willing to accept the observations on offer. There is nothing in Funny Games to match the jaw dropping scene in Scream in which the two killers determine the proper order to inflict convincing wounds.

What doesn't seem to be appreciated here is the way in which Craven and Williamson crafted their horror and their insights out of elements which their audience would be genuinely responsive to--in this case, the comforts of WB (or CW) style easy sentimentality. It's a big mistake to dismiss the level of empathy people invest in their relationships with "types" rather than full blooded characters. That's why I'm personally fascinated with role playing and pop style iconic posturing--because this shorthand has become enough for many to have a full blown, sympathetic investment in character and, by consequence, a relationship to reality. That relationship may not be to the liking of sophisticates and cynics but that distanced remove from what many very sincerely embrace is the kind of fatal miscalculation that allows polemics like Funny Games to fall on largely deaf ears. I don't believe that Miless needed this particular silly little picture to open his eyes to the power of violent images; that realization would have happened eventually anyway because he was most likely sensitive enough to be primed for it. It's those who will never be receptive to this technique and will simply find it a waste of time to whom you have the responsibility of meeting halfway--assuming, once again, that you want to try and convince them that your point of view is the more refined and correct one. Eastwood got it right in Unforgiven; couch it all in the language of recognizable, familiar genre and you can affect many in ways they won't be able to immediately process. I've never seen an audience walk out of a picture in such a mournful procession as during that first weekend for Unforgiven.

I think comparisons between Funny Games and Scream are interesting though I think people are being polarised between only being allowed to be interested in one film or the other, either the supposed superiority of Funny Games or the supposed 'bloodlust' of Scream. That only sees the film (and horror films in general) in the most basic terms.

I thought Scream was an excellent film - it might be difficult to look beyond the crappy SubUrban Legend/I Still Know What You Ate Last Supper winkingly self-conscious knock offs that came out after (not to mention the execrable Scary Movie parodies) but that shows how much that first film revitalised the horror film in general (which Craven managed to do at least once a decade, though so far not in the 2000s) and, yes, even the disreputable and milked dry slasher film genre.

There may be an element of watching to see how various characters meet their doom (it is a horror film after all!) but the first film had a great way of building the mystery up and up and expanding the number of suspects until everyone could have had a motive to have committed the murders. In that sense the first Scream is the 'purest' of the series in that it has a relatively logical plot and while the revelation comes somewhat out of left field it also is relatively understandable.

There is also the sense that the revelation has to be a disappointment after the way the killer's garb has been mythologised through the film, and will be mythologised in the sequels. It is akin to Laurie clawing off the killer's mask in the original Halloween - we are desperate to see and understand but if we do then the horror is immediately diminished to something understandable. That is one of the reasons why I think getting deeply into the "shape's" backstory in the recent Halloween remake sort of misses the point of the killer being almost a figure of these teenage girl's subconscious, punishing them for becoming adults (that is also the reason why I am so harsh on Switchblade Romance/Haute Tension's schizo-twist - it wasn't a new twist on an old formula, just making an old formula obvious and destroying logic at the same time!)

Added to that is the much imitated inovation of self conscious characters who have all the same horror film references as the rest of us (except for Drew Barrymore's Casey but she doesn't last long because of that). It is interesting to go back and see Scream now that almost every film, let alone horror film, has to have a kind of winking, parodical sensibility to see this device actually used properly - not just as a gimmick but as centrally important to the themes of the film. I think it was right to compare this to Funny Games as similarly the characters in Scream are trapped by the conventions of the film they are in (not leaving the party to go to another part of the house on your own, the hard nosed reporter having to fall for the childishly sweet deputy and so on), fully aware of the cliches but powerless to be able to prevent them from occuring.

The boyfriend of the main character even talks at one point leading up to the obligatory sex scene (that also by deflowering the lead puts her in mortal danger due to violation of slasher film rules!) that they should change the genre of the film - which he is allowed to do because similarly to the boys in Funny Games he is revealed to have been orchestrating the carnage.

There is the disturbing sense of ritual in the entire film as the characters separate for their various set piece torments and deaths until the inevitable convergence for the final party at the house.

I was also reminded of the Nightmare on Elm Street series and the one set piece in the third film, which Craven wrote, in which one of the children is puppeteered to a rooftop plunge by Freddy that seems a similar comment on slasher film conventions (and of course Wes Craven's New Nightmare could be seen as a dry run for Scream's 'real world' referentiality, in which Craven himself apears as the writer/director seemingly compelled to write the events occuring in reality to Heather)

I would strongly defend Scream and even find it more subversive than Funny Games in the way it couches its commentary in the entertainment terms it is criticising, rather than being so in your face confrontational as the Haneke film.

The sequels are also fascinating. I'd be interested to find out whether Craven planned to go on if the first was a success or, like any successful horror film, more films were asked for by the studio - the fact that he stayed as director for all three suggests there was a plan behind the whole series. I get the impression Craven is charting the rise and fall of a horror film cycle in the three Scream films (having been in a position to start, write the best of the sequels and finish the Nightmare on Elm Street series; to see the terrible remake to Hills Have Eyes and the Euro knock offs of Last House On The Left). The necessarily makes the sequels an exercise in diminishing returns but I think that is one of the points being made - how a fascinating premise gets diluted and turned into just an exercise in how people are going to be killed next.

Scream 2, by tackling sequels head on manages to include an opening sequence as disturbing as that in the first film, though this time the killings occur among a huge crowd rather than in complete isolation. The film within the film also begins themes of trying to live up to a previous success (or in Sidney Prescott's case of trying to escape from notoriety). This time the characters are dogged by repeating actions they previously experienced, not just through their knowledge of film but their knowledge of what they did the last time they were in that position.

There is also the move to bigger, more flamboyant set pieces such as the drawn out car crash scene whose only narrative purpose is to kill off the already marked for death best friend but which is almost a masterclass in milking a tense scene for all it is worth.

Or the scene with Sarah Michelle Gellar in the sorority house which is almost like a mini version of Black Christmas while at the same time illustrating how this role, which would normally be filled by an unknown, interchangable actress, is taken by the well known star of the Buffy show in the bigger sequel. (It also adds another aspect to the inevitable murder of the character with it being played by an actress famous for her television character's indestructability)

And there are flashes of Argento in the opera scenes, the multiple killers and the sequence with Gail and Dewey in the darkened school, with one watching behind toughened glass as the other is stabbed.

The third film gleefully destroys the world it has created, turning the small town from the first film into a soundstage set and staging one of the chases from the first almost shot for shot, until the point Sidney opens a door without realising that the room beyond has not been built!

The reveals of the killers in the second and third films become even more absurd - the second film's climax goes in the direction of twist upon twist, enormously elaborate plan carried out in great detail by a character you only see in the background of two or three shots in the rest of the film and therefore could not really have been able to have been guessed by the audience! The third film shows how series become depressingly convoluted as they desperately try to find a plausible motivation for the killer while being tied to their lead character, about whom they supposedly revealed everything in the previous films! (the Alien series would be another good example, as Ripley's reasons for being dragged back into conflict got more contrived over the sequels)

John Cope, what did you think of Man Bites Dog? I have not seen The Great Ecstasy Of Robert Carmichael yet but the shocking moment seems similar to what occurs near the end of that film.

What I enjoy in the original Funny Games is not the anti-generic stuff that seems to be Haneke's main interest in the material - for me, the moralizing and self-reflexivity seems to be obvious and hardly devastating as critique (Benny's Video's I-see-therefore-I-do is even more reductive)- but the way it functions as a straight genre film, or rather, the way it undercuts certain genre conventions to enhance its effectiveness as a thriller.

In most serial killer films, we're presented with the 'final victims' - the end of a line of grisly murders, and the trail of the dead that went before are just collateral damage, abstract plot points. The audience gets the closure it craves. Here, there's no closure, no congratulatory payoff for the audience, so it's as if we're seeing one of those abstracted, suppressed stories: the killers carry on and kill again. Haneke's careful setting up of the seriality of the crimes, the daisy chain of casual connections that lead the killers from one set of victims to the next, underscores this.

The second element, and the crucial one for me in making the film effective, is the resourcefulness of the victims. Almost every horror film depends on the stupidity or irrationality of its victims, but in Funny Games, the family seem to me to make consistently smart decisions in the circumstances. They do everything they can to survive, but still fail. So, contrary to what several posters have said, I don't think we can have an air of smug superiority to the characters at all. It's much harder to distance ourselves from their actions (even though Haneke is supplying alienation effects at another level of the narrative), thus the terror is more invasive than with most horror films, where we could never imagine ourselves wandering back into the old, dark, house alone, in torn lingerie.

EDIT: Actually, what I'm interested in hearing is why this comparatively bloodless film that has greater-than-average respect for its victims is so widely perceived as particularly 'nasty', 'brutal' or 'sadistic'. Is it really just the absence of narrative closure / punishment for the killers that creates this effect for viewers? Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer did the same thing and acquired the same reputation.

zedz wrote:EDIT: Actually, what I'm interested in hearing is why this comparatively bloodless film that has greater-than-average respect for its victims is so widely perceived as particularly 'nasty', 'brutal' or 'sadistic'. Is it really just the absence of narrative closure / punishment for the killers that creates this effect for viewers? Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer did the same thing and acquired the same reputation.

I view it as all those mentioned not because of how the family is treated, but because of how the audience is treated.

EDIT: Although I would also ad the adjectives "fascist" and "puritanical" to what you listed.

Robotron wrote:I view it as all those mentioned not because of how the family is treated, but because of how the audience is treated.

That's pretty much what the novelty of Funny Games is. It beats up the audience, and does a great job of it, which is why I'm hoping the audience is full when I see it.

Magic Hate Ball wrote:

Robotron wrote:I view it as all those mentioned not because of how the family is treated, but because of how the audience is treated.

That's pretty much what the novelty of Funny Games is. It beats up the audience, and does a great job of it, which is why I'm hoping the audience is full when I see it.

Indeed. Since this is ostensibly a shot-for-shot remake, the fun will not be in watching the film, but in watching the audience. We can all play Barmy-for-a-day and report back on our audience reactions.

I'd be interested to find out whether Craven planned to go on if the first was a success or, like any successful horror film, more films were asked for by the studio - the fact that he stayed as director for all three suggests there was a plan behind the whole series.

This doesn't disprove the "plan" theory, but I think Craven only did the third one as a quid pro quo for Music from the Heart.

Robotron wrote:I view it as all those mentioned not because of how the family is treated, but because of how the audience is treated.

EDIT: Although I would also ad the adjectives "fascist" and "puritanical" to what you listed.

So, did you actually feel hurt / violated by the film (and if not, in what does the supposed sadism and brutality consist?), or did you just take offence because you assumed Haneke wanted you to feel that way?

In my view, the film doesn't work the way that Haneke seems to think it does (i.e. as audience-punishment or conscience-tickler), but it does work as a straight thriller, with interesting, if inadvertent, genre implications.

Jeff wrote:

Magic Hate Ball wrote:

Robotron wrote:I view it as all those mentioned not because of how the family is treated, but because of how the audience is treated.

That's pretty much what the novelty of Funny Games is. It beats up the audience, and does a great job of it, which is why I'm hoping the audience is full when I see it.

Indeed. Since this is ostensibly a shot-for-shot remake, the fun will not be in watching the film, but in watching the audience. We can all play Barmy-for-a-day and report back on our audience reactions.

And maybe someone can watch Barmy watching the audience watching the movie to bring it all full circle.

in the house that Jack built

zedz wrote:In my view, the film doesn't work the way that Haneke seems to think it does (i.e. as audience-punishment or conscience-tickler), but it does work as a straight thriller, with interesting, if inadvertent, genre implications.

I agree with this but that's about the most I can say for it.

Zedz, I am curious if you've seen the aforementioned Robert Carmichael and if so what you thought of it.

And, colin, I have to confess that I have not seen Man Bites Dog in such a long time that I can't really bring it all to mind or even remember many specifics, save for the famous scene in which the two competing film crews come into contact with one another. I do remember liking it though. I'll have to check it out again.

I really do wonder what it is most of you expect to see from the audiences for this new film. I don't expect much personally and may skip the whole experience of seeing it projected as the way I figure it the audience will fall heavily into one of two likely camps. First, the art crowd who is well aware of what to expect and may only end up fascinated by their own fascination in a kind of intellectual rigor mortis. Second, the "regular horror types" who will just be bored and, yes, maybe vocally irritated at best. I don't expect much more than that. Still, what would be especially funny if you will would be the prospect of the whole damn audience being full of people who have just come to check out everybody else's reaction. Talk about a funny game played on us.

John Cope wrote:And, colin, I have to confess that I have not seen Man Bites Dog in such a long time that I can't really bring it all to mind or even remember many specifics, save for the famous scene in which the two competing film crews come into contact with one another. I do remember liking it though. I'll have to check it out again.

The scene from Man Bites Dog that came to mind reading some of the Robert Carmichael reviews was:

Spoiler

About an hour in where the camera crew get drunk with the killer they are filming, break into an apartment and assault a couple. The sudden cut to the morning after scene with the pan from the woman's disemboweled body to her partner lying dead on the kitchen counter to the camera crew sleeping among the litter as if they are just waking up after a rowdy party is the beginning of the end for everyone in the film. The boundary for the film crew had been crossed a long time ago by that stage of the film, but it brutally underlines that the film crew deserve their deaths as much as the killer does (maybe more for using and in some ways legitimising a deranged wacko's crimes for their own purposes, the way reality TV seeks out, exploits and eggs on mentally unstable people for their entertainment value), just as the killer's surrounding family and friends deserve their fate for calmly allowing him to go about his business.

I've seen There Will Be Blood twice now and I swear each time they show this trailer theres extremely loud murmuring for a good time after it's over, and there's always one jackass who laughs loudly at the line "You shouldn't forget the importance of entertainment" as if he's in on some inside joke.

John Cope wrote: Zedz, I am curious if you've seen the aforementioned Robert Carmichael and if so what you thought of it.

Sorry, I missed your question first time around, but no I haven't. Do you recommend it as a film, or just raise it as relevant in the context of this discussion?

zedz wrote:Sorry, I missed your question first time around, but no I haven't. Do you recommend it as a film, or just raise it as relevant in the context of this discussion?

It's better than Funny Games though perhaps not quite as good as The Piano Teacher.

It's an excellent film and I highly recommend it. Superficially, it bears some similarities to Funny Games, which is why I brought it up. For me it's far more successful because of the kinds of questions it raises and the extent of its formal accomplishments.

First review I've seen, from Sundance.

The street marketing team for the film has decided to just go ahead and give audiences eggs.

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but the trailer I saw last night before TWBB was an uninspired rip-off of Kubrick's trailer for A Clockwork Orange. Since this thread is 6 pages, though, surely there must be more to the film than what didn't interest me whatsoever in said trailer.