Funny Games (1997 film)

Infobox Film
name = Funny Games


director = Michael Haneke
producer = Veit Heiduschka
writer = Michael Haneke
starring = Susanne Lothar
Ulrich Mühe
Arno Frisch
Frank Giering
cinematography = Jürgen Jürges
editing = Andreas Prochaska
distributor = Fox Lorber
released = May 14, 1997
runtime = 108 min.
country = Austria
language = German
French
budget = $5,000,000
followed_by = "Funny Games US"
amg_id = 1:155003
imdb_id = 0119167

"Funny Games" is an experimental 1997 Austrian horror film directed by Michael Haneke. The plot of the film involves two teenagers who hold a family hostage and torture them with sadistic games.

Plot

The film begins with a well-to-do family - Georg, his wife Anna, his son Schorschi, and their dog - arriving at their lake house. Their next-door neighbor pops in to visit, accompanied by two young men, Peter and Paul, whom he introduces as friends. The two men begin imposing themselves on the family's courtesy, and in the process destroy their phone and ruin all their eggs. Eventually a frustrated Anna demands that the men leave, asking Georg to eject them from the premises. Paul breaks Georg's leg with Georg's golf club and the two men take the family hostage. They force the family to participate in a number of sadistic games in order to stay alive.

Paul asks if the family wants to bet that they will be alive by 9:00 in the morning, though he doubts that they will win. Between playing their games, the two men keep up a constant patter, and Paul frequently ridicules Peter's weight and lack of intelligence. He describes a number of contradicting stories of Peter's past, though no definitive explanation is ever presented as to the men's origins or motives. When some of the family's other neighbors arrive for a visit, Anna passes the men off as friends until the visitors leave. Schorschi eventually escapes to the house next door, but finds the family dead. He attempts to shoot Paul with a rifle, but the gun fails to go off. Paul returns him to the house, along with the gun. After a few more games, the men play a counting-out game between the family members and select Schorschi. They shoot him and leave.

Georg and Anna weep for their loss, but eventually resolve to survive. Anna flees the house while Georg, with a broken leg, tries to get help with the malfunctioning phone. Anna struggles to find help, but eventually Peter and Paul reappear, capture her, and return to the house. They kill Georg and take Anna out on the family's boat. Around eight o'clock, they casually throw the bound Anna into the ice-cold water to drown, thus winning the bet. They dock at the house of the neighbours that had previously visited the family, and request some eggs, thereby restarting their cycle of murder.

Cast

* Susanne Lothar as Anna
* Ulrich Mühe as Georg
* Arno Frisch as Paul
* Frank Giering as Peter
* Stefan Clapczynski as Schorschi
* Doris Kunstmann as Gerda
* Christoph Bantzer as Fred
* Wolfgang Glück as Robert

Themes

The film frequently blurs the line between fiction and reality, especially highlighting the act of observation. The character Paul breaks the fourth wall throughout the movie and addresses the camera in various ways. As he directs Anna to look for her dead dog, he turns, winks, and smirks at the camera. When he asks the family to bet on their survival, he turns to the camera and asks the audience whether they will bet as well. At the end of the film, when requesting eggs from the next family, he looks into the camera and smirks again. Only Paul shows awareness that the film is being observed by the audience.

Paul also frequently states his intentions to follow the standards of movie plot development. When he asks the audience to bet, he guesses that the audience wants the family to win. After the killers vanish in the third act, Paul later explains that he had to give the victims a last chance to escape or else it would not be dramatic. Toward the end of the movie, he postpones killing the rest of the family because the movie has not yet reached feature length. Throughout the film, Paul shows awareness of the audience's expectations.

However, Paul also causes the film to go against convention on a number of occasions. In thriller movies, one sympathetic character usually survives, but here all three family members die. When Anna successfully shoots Peter, as a possible start to a heroic escape for the family, Paul uses a remote control to rewind the film itself and prevent her action. After Schorschi dies, Paul regrets killing him first because it goes against convention and limits the suspense for the rest of the film. At the end of the film, the murderers prevent Anna from using a knife in the boat to cut her bonds. An earlier close-up had pointed out the knife's location as a possible set-up for a final-act escape, but this becomes a red herring. At the end of the film, Paul again smirks triumphantly at the audience. As a self-aware character, he is able to go against the viewers' wishes and make himself the winner of the film.

After killing Anna, Peter and Paul argue about the line between reality and fiction. Paul believes that a fiction that is observed is just as real as anything else, but Peter dismisses this idea. Unlike Paul, Peter never shows an awareness that he is in a film.

Michael Haneke states that the entire film was not created to be a horror film. He says he wanted to make a message about violence in the media. He had written a short essay revealing how he felt on the issue, called "Violence + Media." It is available to view on the website for the film's remakeFact|date=July 2008.

Violence

The version of "Funny Games" most widely available on DVD in the United States is not rated by the MPAA. Despite being unrated, the film does not feature graphic violence, and almost all of the death and mutilation occurs off-screen.

American remake

An American remake of the film, also called "Funny Games", has been released. It stars Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet and Naomi Watts, and is also written and directed by Michael Haneke. [cite news | last = Gleiberman | first = Owen | coauthors = | title = Funny Games | work = | pages = | language = | publisher = Entertainment Weekly | date = 2008-03-12 | url = http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20183709,00.html | accessdate = 2008-03-16]

References

External links

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