Benny's Video

One of the most inscrutable, alarming, frustrating, and fascinating contemporary film directors, Michael Haneke (THE PIANO TEACHER, CACHE) has created a name for himself by examining disturbing issues (sadism, violence, suicide, racism, voyeurism, alienation, nihilism, and misguided faith) with a cold cerebral eye. BENNY'S VIDEO opens with disturbing images of a pig being slaughtered; it is one of the many images obsessively viewed and reviewed by Benny, the 14-year old son of a wealthy Viennese family. Detached and ignored, Benny seems able to experience life only through his video camera. When he kills a young girl and records it on tape, his parents go about covering up the murder, and Haneke draws everyone--Benny, his parents, and the viewers themselves--into a web of complicity and postmodern dysfunction. Though his films are difficult to watch and invariably leave the viewer with more questions than answers, Haneke's unswerving films are some of the most compelling examples of the new European cinema.