#975: HANEKE, Michael: Funny Games (1997)

HANEKE, Michael (Austria)
Funny Games [1997]
Spine #975
Blu-ray

Michael Haneke's most notorious provocation, Funny Games spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. In a series of escalating "games," the sadistic duo subject their victims to unspeakable physical and psychological torture over the course of a night. A home-invasion thriller in which the genre's threat of bloodshed is made stomach-churningly real, the film ratchets up shocks even as its executioners interrupt the action to address the audience, drawing queasy attention to the way that cinema milks pleasure from pain and stokes our appetite for atrocity. With this controversial treatise on violence and entertainment, Haneke issued a summation of his cinematic philosophy, implicating his audience in a spectacle of unbearable cruelty.

109 minutes

Color
5.1 Surround
in German
1:85:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2019

Director/Writers

Michael Haneke was 55 when he wrote and directed Funny Games.

Other films by Haneke in the Collection:

#1163a: The Seventh Continent (1989)
#1163b: Benny's Video (1992)
#1163c: 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)
#780: Code Unknown (2000)
#894: The Piano Teacher (2001)

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by critic Bilge Ebiri.

Commentary

None.

Interviews

With Haneke and actor Frisch.

Interview

With film historian Alexander Horwath.

Press conference

From the 1997 Cannes Film Festival featuring Haneke and actors Lothar and Mühe.

Trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

99

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