Linking to this AV Club article about Michael Haneke's Funny Games (the German and American versions), is really just an excuse to say something that I've been talking about for years.
I'm surprised that writer Mike D'Angelo doesn't mention what every other article mentions about the film(s). In short, the film is about two upper-middle-class young men that torture a similarly affluent family, sometimes physically, sometimes mentally. The most noteworthy scene, at least according to serious critics, is the one in which, in the midst of a moment of toying with a victim, one of the malefactors turns directly to the camera and gives a knowing look.
The idea is that Haneke is acknowledging the audience in order to relate the characters' sadism with those of the viewing public. By watching this, you are in league with the sadists. This is horseshit. It's Haneke's film, not ours, and we participate because we're led to believe that his work is important. It's this reason that I won't watch his films--I don't want to participate.
To compare, imagine a man waving at you from a corner. "Hey, you seem pretty hip. I've got something to show you. It's really cool." You think, "Okay," and come over. He shows you a picture of a woman having sex with a horse. "Ha, ha. Now you're a pervert, too." No, you're not. You've been tricked into seeing something you didn't ask for.
It's disheartening and a dark sign of our times that our most important films are those considered to be "challenging" in the manner of "how much can you take?" Haneke's films are consistently about man's inhumanity to man--is this new ground? Does it need to be addressed by heightening the cruelty and rubbing our faces in it, disconnected from any judgment or resolution?
An artist has to go where the muse takes him but is this the best use of one of the world's best directors? More importantly, what does it say about the elite audience that these type of films are considered must-see?
Part of it, of course, is that the "elite" audience is no longer what it once was. Whereas the audience for "art films" at one time had a grounding in the Western canon and a capacity to understand film language--classic liberal arts training in the humanities. Today's audience is more likely to affect high-culture cinephilia as a status-indicator. Their training is in spotting fictional white men being evil.
The issues in The Seventh Seal or Viridiana, questions of faith and morality, are no longer part of the elite's mindset. A generation ago, the cultured allowed the challenges presented in those films to be taken as conclusions and we're left with a Nietzschean world; the only subjects considered worthwhile are sex, madness and extreme violence.
I played my part, too. When one pursues alternative media--artistic, cult and "bad"--the rabbit hole to extremity is too large to miss. Herschell Gordon Lewis leads to Cannibal Holocaust, leads to the Guinea Pig series. Eventually one looks to discover whether one has a breaking point.
One comes to realize that these extremes have an effect. Not necessarily a long-term, warp-your-mind effect--though that's possible. One gets through a movie showing the detailed torture of someone, or a painting of children being molested or a musical track of pained screams and one is forced to take stock of exactly how he feels. And that feeling is terrible: disturbed, uncomfortable, dirty.
The films of Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier (truly a waste, considering his earlier work) and works like A Serbian Film are for people who don't know how they want to feel. These are our cultural arbiters, hollow zombies who have no higher calling than their lifestyles, who fill their spiritual voids--a place normally for joy, wonder and love--with depravity, cruelty and disgust and call it high entertainment.
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