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Funny
Games
(2008)
 
Funny Games is a pretentious exercise
in satire that has no apparent reason to exist, seeing as
it's a scene-for-scene remake of a 1997 film from Austria by
the same filmmaker.
A wealthy married couple (Tim Roth, Naomi Watts) and their young son
(Devon Gearhart) arrive at their lake house for a vacation. Paul
(Michael Pitt) and Peter (Brady Corbet), two charming young men who
initially appear with one of the couple's neighbors, take the family
hostage, treating it as a game and betting the family that they won't
be alive when the next morning arrives.
Writer/director Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher, Caché)
remakes his own earlier production of the same name, but to lesser effect. What
seemed daring eleven years ago now seems merely shallow and
pretentious, especially when moved to an American setting. Haneke
thinks he's being far more clever than he actually is, and the whiff
of authorial smugness wafting from the screen is strangely appropriate
for a film that offers up such leaden satire.
The subtext about audience enjoyment of cinematic violence has been
better explored by a film like The Devil's Rejects, which I find far
more subversive than the original Funny Games or this remake.
There's such a chasm of emotional detachment in Funny Games that one
simply cannot connect with it. If Haneke wants to make us
uncomfortable accomplices to torture and murder, then he needs to make
us enjoy it and then he needs to make us feel uncomfortable about
enjoying it. Boring us, as he does here, defeats his own purpose.
The talents of a gifted cinematographer like Darius Khondji (The
City of Lost Children, Se7en) are wasted on a production that the
director wants lit in such a flat manner. Production designer Kevin
Thompson (Stranger Than Fiction, Michael Clayton) perfectly
realizes the bourgeois lifestyle of the family.
The cast is the film's only strong point. Pitt and Corbet perfectly
capture the banality of evil in a chilling fashion as a latter day
Leopold and Loeb. The performances of the actors playing the family
are also quite good; Roth plays against type as the helpless father
while Watts is compelling as the traumatized but defiant mother, and
Gearhart is believable as the terrified child.
The real torture in Funny Games is that which is visited upon the
audience by a filmmaker more intent on wagging his finger in our faces
than on telling a compelling story or even making us feel something.
-Danielle
Ní Dhighe
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All contents ©
2004-2007 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Michael
Haneke
Writer: Michael
Haneke
Starring: Naomi
Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Devon Gearhart
Distributor: Warner
Independent Pictures
Runtime: 107
min
Rating: R
Release Date: March
14, 2008
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