#1163b: HANEKE, Michael: Benny's Video (1992)

HANEKE, Michael (Austria, Switzerland)
Benny's Video [1992]
Spine #1163b
Blu-ray


Michael Haneke turns the unflinching gaze of the camera back on itself in this provocative, profoundly disturbing study of emotional disconnection in the age of mass-media saturation. Benny (a frighteningly affectless Arno Frisch), the teenage son of wealthy, disengaged parents (Angela Winkler and Ulrich Mühe), finds release in the world of violent videos—an obsession that leads him to create his own monstrous work of real-life horror. Layering screens within screens and digital frames within the filmic frame, Benny’s Video is a coolly postmodern, metacinematic labyrinth in which the boundaries between actual and mediated violence become terrifyingly indistinguishable.

110 minutes
Color
Monaural
in German
1:66:1
Criterion Release 2022

Director/Writers


The Film

a

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty-four page booklet featuring an essay by novelist John Wray.

Commentary

None.

Interview 1

With actor Frisch.

Interview 2

With film historian Alexander Horwath.

Interviews

From 2005 with Haneke.

Documentary

About Haneke’s career featuring interviews with Haneke and actors Juliette BinocheIsabelle Huppert, and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Deleted scenes

From Benny’s Video

Trailers

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

By Spine #

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