Funny Games
This is not a feel-good picture. Funny Games is in the tradition of the holiday-from-hell movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A family is trapped in their lakeside villa by a couple of sadistic teenagers, and gradually the audience is drawn deeper and deeper on an emotional level into the victims’ terrifying situation, until it becomes virtually unbearable. But although director Michael Haneke displays a complete mastery over the thriller genre, he manages at the same time to satirize (but not funnily) this type of movie. Haneke succeeds in making violence real — we are used to consuming media violence in an easily-digestible form. Amazingly, the film manages to convey this while only showing a single shot of explicit violence — which itself is not all that disturbing. Funny Games exploits a heavily stylized genre in a remarkably original and extremely engaging way, backed by solid acting and screenplay, and intelligently coloured subtitles. I thoroughly recommend this high-quality movie to anyone except children. Expect to feel artistically satisfied, but don’t expect to walk out feeling relaxed and comfortable. You get the feeling that the director doesn’t care whether you like Funny Games or not: He’s got a message and he wants to ram it down your throat.
Matthew Harvey
