Funny Games

In Funny Games (1997), Michael Haneke plays with juxtaposing opposites to disorient and play the audience—both formally and thematically.  The premise is that a well off family is vacationing at their lake house when two seemingly polite young men dressed in white arrive at their door and begin a series of sadistic games, resulting in the death of the family.  First and foremost, Haneke is playing with the distinctions between genres—it is a horror movie, but it is also very quiet, very still, even beautiful at many moments, and also somehow comedic.  The film is characterized by its still shots.  The frame waits for actors to walk into it, rather than falling them around.  In the beginning there are an abundance of shots which do not even contain the actors.  Higher emphasis is given to the details of the set, with the dialogue from other rooms narrating the scene.  Many of the still shots appear to be a wide angle, and from far away.  This approach is used in one of the first instances in which Peter and Paul (the two torturers) appear.  This shot in particular has a lot of satisfying formal qualities to it: there is a sense of doubling and mirroring that goes on with the two boys each in white, and each framed perfectly either side of the white gate which creates a striped pattern across the figures. 

            Haneke seems to rely on a certain rhythm and repetition of devices or very specific themes throughout his films.  In the beginning, the house wife says “I don’t know the time here.”  Throughout the film, various people ask the time drawing attention to the disturbing state of disorientation induced by the trauma and also the length of the film itself.  At one point the father says he has had enough and Paul turns toward the camera and smirks, mentioning that we haven’t even reached a feature film length yet. 

Beyond the question of time, there is also a repetitive use of certain color schemes.  Again Haneke is creating a play, a reversal, by having white signify evil instead of black.  Frequently the most violent scenes will occur casually, in a beautifully light white and yellow room.  The use of yellow against white recurs throughout the film, most notably with the eggs cracked on the ground.  There is also a lot of white on white—the white of their outfits against the white of the window pane, the white of the golf ball against the gloves, the white of the shirt against the fridge, etc.  There is a cleanness and a banality to these shots.  Haneke’s use of violence is very dry—as is his sense of humor.  A violent gesture will be followed by an absurd joke; a incredibly bright scene will be followed by a scene shot in almost complete darkness.  Following a scene of intense action is usually a long single shot lasting for an uncomfortable amount of time where barely anything moves.

The sustained still shots function in two interesting ways: firstly they reinforce the sense of nonchalant boredom attached to violence that is presented by Peter and Paul.  The two are constantly having a witty back and forth while torturing the family, calling each other names from American TV shows like Beavis and Butthead and talking about snacks.  The sheer sustained duration of these scenes also creates more tension for the audience because it is mimicking real time.  This manipulation and play between the real and the fictitious is another theme present in the work.  This play becomes evident when Paul grabs the remote, pauses the movie and rewinds the film at one point to create an alternate plot, alluding to the materiality of the medium.  He acknowledges the audience and their expectations, but continues to play this absurd game.  Towards the end, Paul comments: “Fiction is real right? Because you see it in a film,” alluding to the possibilities of film to manipulate narratives and realities, and comment on the entire process while doing so.