Funny Games: passive accomplices to violence?

funny games is an American film by Michael Haneke and a completely faithful replica of the Austrian version released in German of the same title and director in 1997. The film is about the assault of two young people on a family on vacation.

It could be a thrillr violent like any other, but it is not the plot that makes it special funny games. It is the lesson that we want to give to viewers, criticizing the massive violent and insipid entertainment of many film productions that sneak into our homes.

funny games criticizes vulgar and violent entertainmenta kind of treatment for a public obsessed by the casual consumption of images of suffering.

funny games (both in its Austrian version and in its American remake) It aims to make the viewer understand to what extent they are habitually complicit in the violence they witness. In your environment or as a movie viewer.

Funny Games: a story of unconventional violence

The film begins as Ann and George (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) drive across the country to their summer home with their young son, Georgie (Devon Gearhart). During their trip with their Land Rover, they listen to an opera CD. Upon arrival, they tow their charming wooden sailboat.

As they settle into their vacation home, two well-spoken, but strange, young men appear at your door. Their impeccable manners and apparent membership in the rich white club allows them easy access to his home. And here the nightmare begins.

The family confronts two young, well-spoken sociopathswho over the course of the following night torment them with a knife, a gun, a golf club and impeccable manners.

These guys address each other differently. Sometimes, like Peter and Paul; others like Tom and Jerry or Beavis and Butt-Head. They are played by Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet.

Who are these sociopaths?

Peter and Paul function without an identifiable motive or affection. When George, the father, in a scene in the film asks one of them why he is being so cruel, the character responds with answers that parody the type of easy story that the viewer expects.

He alludes to his unhappy childhood, sexual instability, class resentment or poor education. Everything is typical, expected and does not explain anything. Haneke laughs here at the simple arguments to explain the psychology of the characters from the mass media.

Peter and Paul wear pristine white gloves while performing their terrible deeds. On a few occasions, Mr. Pitt addresses the audience directly, mocking us for supporting Anne and George’s survival.

In the film, small allusions are made to the complicity that the viewer acquires with the violent plot what is happening.

There are explicit winks from the actors to the camera while the victims are being manipulated in a macabre game on screen. The recreation of a common scene in the kitchen imitating what many of us do when consuming violent movies, turning it into something light.

“Why don’t you just kill us and get it over with?” expresses the abused character of George. His tormentor’s response is: “What about entertainment then?” Meanwhile, we are involved in the horrible spectacle.

What is Funny Games looking for?

Michael Haneke is an Austrian film director who has accustomed us to filming unconventional stories, with entertainment linked at all times to the reflection of his sequences.

Haneke’s violence is not funny, nor elegant, nor sexy, nor even particularly dramatic, but rather it is simply and relentlessly unpleasant. There aren’t even any real plot developments to disperse or deflect the agony.

The film shows us that there is no family, residential or work perfection that takes us sufficiently away from a dangerous situation. We are not prepared to react to what we would be tremendously vulnerable, humans. Nothing to do with Hollywood perfection.

Our ingenuity and complicity with the absurd spectacular violence of cinema

Haneke wants to expose us and tries to fulfill his wish by anticipating the conclusions of our reflections. Check how all our deductions seem to be another product of “arduous” years of watching films with a violent commercial nature.

That’s why the movie tricks us, especially with the clues we think will be relevant. so that the family can “free themselves” from the drama they are experiencing. Clues or indications that are usually associated with other violent films. Nothing could be further from the truth, because these clues do not become relevant throughout the film.

The end of myths

The attacks are not logical or expected. The gender roles are reversed, the escape from the scene of the events is not heroic nor is the character’s end full of mystery. The escape, something that always gives so much play throughout the plot, is absolutely prevented and beaten from the beginning.

It is dry violence, without embellishments, devoid of unnecessary recreations on the screen. It is a violence that is recreated in our psychology because precisely it challenges it based on what the media teaches us.

funny games It is not to be missed if you want a challenge with your usual movie-going patterns and avoidable if what you want is to consume films with doses of violence in your role as a regular spectator.

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