Features Mar 21 2008 @ 12:10 pm
DOUBLESHOT: Funny Games, Round 2
Funny Games
The second round of our debate on the validity or worthlessness of Funny Games. A summary of the posts so far:
- Round 1 of our debate, including an overview of the Double Shot ground rules
- My original zero star review
- Luke Harrington’s 4 star review
- Ghost Lyon’s 1 1/2 star review of Haneke’s original 1997 version
Here is round two of Luke and I’s debate. For redundancy’s sake, I am arguing against the film, while Luke is arguing for it. Comments and further insights are, of course, encouraged and welcomed (although I noticed a distinct trend toward siding with Luke last time…tsk tsk guys, I’m obviously correct here).
2nd Argument Against: Funny Games logically fails because it employs the very thing it seeks to condemn
Evan Derrick
Luke, from your review: “Funny Games is relentless in its criticism of a culture filled with people who are all doomed to die but still constantly seek their own survival, all while enjoying the deaths of others.” I cannot directly disagree with this (Americans seem to love their torture porn). It’s the rubbernecking syndrome - when there is a wreck on the side of the road, we instinctively slow down. Haneke’s goal with this film is to condemn that desire to rubberneck, that desire to see suffering as long as it isn’t our own. The only problem is that he’s created his own wreck in order to condemn us for looking at it. Experimentally this has merit. Logically it makes no sense, since it furthers the very thing he’s trying to condemn. Take his own words: “Anyone who leaves the cinema doesn’t need the film, and anybody who stays does.” If Haneke truly wanted to change our appetite for violence he would create films that promote love and forgiveness and human charity, films that instinctively make us say, “I want more of that in my life and less of the violent stuff.” Instead, he’s created a film that utilizes the very thing he (apparently) abhors: cruel, unthinkable violence. He rails against the audience for playing in the mud, all the while being covered head to toe in muck himself. There is a word for this: hypocrite. In terms of the film, Funny Games implodes logically because it cannot sustain the weight of its own goals.
Rebuttal
Luke Harrington
Evan, you make the mistake here of assuming that finding a solution is somehow more important than identifying the problem, when in fact the one depends on the other. To put it simply, the muddy kid won’t be motivated to clean himself off if he’s not made aware of his own muddiness. You propose media that promotes “love and forgiveness and human charity” as a solution to the problem of our culture’s obsession with violence, but no one is going to be interested in a solution if they’re not aware there’s a problem. Haneke’s acting as prophet but you want him to act as priest instead. Doesn’t culture need both? In any case, Funny Games hardly wallows in the mud the way the films it criticizes do—the vast majority of the violence takes place off-screen, and none of it is romanticized or sexed up the way it is in the vast majority of Hollywood pictures. Funny Games strips the glossy sheen off of violence and makes the audience acutely aware of their thirst for it. The intent is satirical (whether or not it’s actually humorous): Haneke gets himself muddy to show others their own muddiness.
2nd Argument For: Funny Games delivers what the marketing promises; you get exactly what you pay for and therefore have no room for complaint
Luke Harrington
Evan, you seem, in your original review, to be implying that the trailer implies something other than what the film delivers. Having watched the trailer (which, admittedly, I didn’t get around to doing until after seeing the film), I’m not sure that’s the case. The trailer promises scenes of well-to-do young men in white gloves terrorizing a family for no reason other than their own entertainment. Doesn’t the film deliver on this? The reason you seem to be rejecting it is that it doesn’t end the way you’d like it to. Of course, the trailer can’t show you the ending for the same reason the critics aren’t supposed to: the majority of moviegoers are (erroneously, I would argue) convinced that part of the enjoyment of a film is being surprised at the end. Experience, however, says that this is almost never the case. No one walks into the theater expecting Rocky to get clobbered in the third round, or expecting Richard Gere and Julia Roberts to break up at the end. This, if nothing else, makes for an interesting dualism, where nobody wants to know the ending but everybody does anyway. The ending that Haneke has provided here is, in a sense the ultimate “twist ending,” as it’s the last ending anyone expects to see. This is, of course, the point: this sort of victimization and violence almost always ends in pointless tragedy in real life, and almost never does in film. Haneke is seeking to undermine the romanticized expectations of his audience, and he’s clearly succeeded in this. If they reject this, it’s simply because they’ve allowed Hollywood to lie to them for far too long.
Rebuttal
Evan Derrick
I don’t reject Funny Games because of the ending. I don’t reject it because I feel the trailer is misleading (which I do, but I’ll deal with that in a second). I don’t even reject it because it involves torture, human suffering, or “pointless [real life] tragedy.” I reject it because all of those things are not the point - the experiment is. I’ll put the next sentence in bold to emphasize my point, which is the entire crux of my argument: if Haneke had not broken the fourth wall in the way that he did or included the ‘rewind’ scene, I would not discount Funny Games’ value as a film. If those elements had not been present (i.e., this would be the film that is advertised in the trailer) you would be left with a grim picture of nihilistic violence. I would not enjoy such a film, but I would have to accord it more respect than I currently do. Subverting the audience’s expectations is a common cinematic convention and one I have no quarrel with. The issue is that once Haneke has subverted our expectations, he takes it two steps further: he calls attention to the fact (Michael Pitt’s fourth wall addresses) and mocks us for it (the scene reversal). This reveals his hand in an unflattering and detrimental way. Up until that point I was engaged with the characters and the story, but once I became aware of Haneke’s goal I recoiled from the film in an immediate and shocking way. I wanted to leave, not because of the content, but because I could see, with absolute clarity, the Wizard pulling levers from behind his emerald curtain. The joke was up and I was the punchline. I have never before experienced such an instantaneous reversal in my attitude towards a film.
If Haneke had left those elements out, he would have succeeded more surely in condemning violence as entertainment. Because he does include them (for him, this arrogant insistence to show his cards is part of the point), Funny Games is reduced to a manipulative Pavlovian experiment.
Note: Look for our conclusions and final thoughts later this weekend
on Mar 21 2008 @ 8:59 pm 1. ryan said …
just came across your site today and couldn’t have done so at a better time…what a great film to have such a lengthy discussion around…believe it or not, when i saw it, a guy had his kids in the theater!! they left, oh, i think right around the time the kid had his brains splattered on the wall…i thought the conclusion of owen gleiberman’s review from Entertainment Weekly was quite fair, as was the entire review:
In an America that treats the Saw and Hostel sequels as been-there-dismembered-that reruns, Funny Games may sound like a movie a lot of teenagers would call a fun night at the megaplex. In Europe, however, it’s an art film. The new version wants to be both. If you enjoy it, Haneke implies, then on some level you’re complicit in what it’s showing you. By sitting there, you too are helping to turn violence into entertainment. (At several points, Pitt’s insinuating ringleader breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience.) Listening to this message, you may be tempted to call the movie’s bluff — to say, ”That’s not art! It’s just torture porn with fancy camera angles!” But Funny Games calls your bluff right back, since Haneke has designed it, knowingly, as a lofty exploitation film. Even the niggling implausibilities — couldn’t Watts try to retrieve Roth’s cell phone? Aren’t there more neighbors to run to? — create the B-movie logic of an enclosed hell. The acting is terrific. Pitt and Corbet are lissome creeps, Roth makes you shudder as he reminds you what pain really looks like, and Watts, in the most bravura sequence (a single 10-minute shot), rivets us with her war to survive.
A highly, if grotesquely, skilled exercise in Snuff Guignol, Funny Games doesn’t come out of nowhere. It has many antecedents, from the mocking cool sadism of A Clockwork Orange to the pressure-cooker intensity of Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs to the house-party torture games of Roman Polanski’s 1966 classic, Cul-de-Sac. True, Haneke, like Gaspar Noé in Irreversible, works in a more extreme — and facile — way. Yet he taps into an extreme era; it’s hard to deny that he gives good squirm. I’ll defend Funny Games not as a statement (on that level, it’s a bit of a crock) but as an experience, a cruelly banal nightmare that held me with its primitive fear factor. B+
on Mar 21 2008 @ 9:23 pm 2. Evan Derrick said …
Glad you showed up, Ryan! Thanks for posting Glieberman’s thoughts, although, as I’m sure you’ve gathered from reading this post, I take a harder stance on the film than he did.
See from your site you have a certain appreciation for The Big Lebowski. As an FYI, we’re devoting next month entirely to the Coen brothers.
on Mar 22 2008 @ 11:07 am 3. ryan said …
nice…i’ll be sure to check back often…back to IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA on TCM
on Mar 24 2008 @ 2:17 am 4. Kate said …
I agree with Luke–making films that promote love and happiness does not actually serve as an antidote to what Haneke is opposing, as you can see by going to any theater; Disney movies play right alongside torture porn.
I also disagree strongly with Evan’s point that the film would have been successful without the breaking of the fourth wall and the rewind scene–for me, those are what *saves* the film from being merely that which it derides. Without those aspects, the audience isn’t implicated, the creators of film aren’t implicated; only the characters are. By speaking to the audience, Paul (? I think? the Michael Pitt character) makes it clear that he stands in for the audience Haneke is addressing, and also for the director and the screenwriter (not only Haneke himself, but any screenwriter/director). He’s the one who “directs” the scene, rarely muddying his own hands with violence but instead putting it off onto his “actor”, Peter. He’s the one who writes the script, offering lame rationales for Peter’s violence, all of which are ultimately unconvincing and utterly meaningless. He’s the one who asks us what we really want to see and then gives it to us, implicating both us and himself. He’s the one who calls bullshit and rewinds the film when it threatens to become unrealistic, standing in for the audience.
Haneke’s also adopting Brecht’s idea of the theater of alienation, deliberately alienating his audience from the characters and reminding them that it is, in fact, a movie, in order to keep our attention on the message, as well as to draw attention the medium of film itself, namely to point out that films don’t just exist in a vacuum. Instead of letting us passively watch and condemn the characters, he makes us aware of our own participation in their actions, our own desire for it, our own support of it through our action of buying a ticket and sitting through it.
Sorry for my long-windedness. Really, you should blame yourselves for such an interesting and inspiring discussion.
on Mar 24 2008 @ 9:23 am 5. Evan Derrick said …
Thanks, Kate, for taking part in the discussion (even if you did disagree with me - curses!).
I realize that my point about creating movies about love and happiness was perhaps a bit too facile. I would tend to agree with you here, Kate. You and I are not making diatribes against it, though, and Haneke is obviously more interested in grinding his axe than in effecting any kind of real change. It smacks of hypocrisy to me - if you’re going to rant and rave about the evils of enjoying violence for entertainment’s sake, then at least have the gumption to create something that stands in direct contrast to that, rather than erecting a work of art that is virtually identical to the very thing you’re ranting against. I can level that condemnation against him because he opens himself up to it, even as I realize my proposed solution is less than practical.
On your comment that the fourth wall and rewind scenes are what explicitly implicate the audience, don’t you think it would have been more effective - more subversive, even - for Haneke to not blare in bright neon letters what he was trying to do? Without that the audiences implication would be much stronger, even if they wouldn’t necessarily understand their complicity. The whole “show me - don’t tell me” mantra that is central to the art of screenwriting could apply here.
Finally, I feel his goal of making us participate in his film is flawed because he has to trick us to get us into the theater, which has been the major thrust of my argument. How can you condemn someone for buying a ticket to your own show when you’ve explicitly lied to them about what they are seeing?
Regardless, great thoughts Kate. Hope you stick around - we want more readers like you, the kind who are willing to articulate their disagreements with us and contribute to the community that we’re trying to build.
on Mar 25 2008 @ 10:18 am 6. Collin said …
What a lovely civilized discussion about a violent and subversive film : )
I have not seen the film (and don’t plan to) but I think the discussion is fascinating. Both sides have good arguments and defend their case well. It’s so nice to read good writing from intelligent people on WHY they feel the way they do about a movie. It’s exasperating to watch a movie like “The Pacifier” and attempt to start a discussion about the value of the film (very low, by the way) to have the other side’s only participation be, “I dunno. I liked it.”
But that’s a different discussion, isn’t it?
on Mar 25 2008 @ 11:03 am 7. Luke Harrington said …
I tried to watch The Pacifier on a trans-Atlantic flight once. I think I made it through, like, five minutes. Painful.
Oh, and Kate: I couldn’t have said it better myself. +1 for mentioning Brecht.
on Mar 27 2008 @ 4:04 am 8. Kate said …
Thanks! I’m enjoying this as well–engaging in debate about this film has forced me to articulate the things I liked about it the way I couldn’t before.
I would actually argue that Funny Games *does* stand in contrast with the idea of enjoying violence for the sake of entertainment. The violence in the film is deeply, deeply unenjoyable–that’s why Haneke doesn’t even show the violence itself, but rather it’s realistic and painful aftermath. It might be possible to find pleasure in the visceral sight of someone being hurt, just because we’re so inured to it, but it’s impossible to take pleasure when we see the pain (both emotional and physical) that results from it. The only bit of violence in the film that’s both shown and somewhat enjoyable is when Peter gets shot, which I think is a nod to the idea that we enjoy torture films because we get to see the bad guys overtaken in the end–Haneke takes that justification away from us by immediately contrasting it with Paul shooting the husband.
I’m also kind of unclear on how you feel you’ve been lied to. I mean, every film promises to deliver something beyond what you see in the trailer. Every film has something to say, even if it’s not something you’re expecting–if he shows you something different, it’s not because you’ve been “tricked”, its just that you went into his film with preconcieved notions. He didn’t make you do anything.
I know you feel it’s disrespectful to the audience for Haneke to “show his cards” and acknowledge the fiction of the film, but I actually see it as very respectful–like other directors, he’s spoonfeeding us his message, but he doesn’t feel the need to cloak it in sugar to make the medicine go down. He’s also asking us to reflect on the nature and affects of film, and that requires an acknowledgement that it is, in fact, a film that we’re watching and not just a world that we get wrapped up in. I mean, it’s “this is not a pipe” in film form, basically.
on Mar 31 2008 @ 9:08 pm 9. Gil said …
Congrats on a great discussion, guys! It’s so refreshing to read such well thought out, cogent arguments from both sides. But I have to agree with Luke on this, I thought it was an excellent film.
I also agree with Kate that the rewind scene and the breaking of the fourth wall is what saves FUNNY GAMES from being an exploitation film. I remember when I saw the original, the rewind scene was my “holy shit moment” when I started figuring out what it was all about, I was really excited! I certainly didn’t feel insulted.
This time I knew exactly what to expect but I still found the tension excrutiating and the violence horrifying, (unlike in Hostel, for example, a film I enjoyed but considered a comedy.)
As for being manipulated by the director, that comes with the territory. All films are exercises in manipulation but I’ll take the director who shows his cards over the one who takes a red hghlighter to point out the dead little girl
PS: Kate, love that ‘”this is not a pipe” in film form’ comment!
on Mar 31 2008 @ 10:11 pm 10. Evan Derrick said …
Sigh, I figured I would be on the losing side of this one.
You typically don’t have a leg to stand on when you’re arguing against art (no matter how reprehensible it might be), other than to say “That’s stupid!”, which won’t get you far. It’s kind of like pushing the wind.
Regardless, it was an enjoyable discussion - Luke did a fine job of rallying his arguments (I particularly liked your prophet/priest analogy). And although I still think I’m right (how could I not?
), I willingly admit that my arguments were primarily emotional in nature.
Also, if I had been an anti-Funny Games purist, I would have never initiated this conversation to begin with. That’s how you really pass the test: don’t see the film at all, and don’t talk about it.
on Jun 14 2008 @ 4:46 am 11. Anil said …
Evan, I think I must say I agree with kristena who commented on the ‘REVIEW: 2ND Opinion: Funny Games’ entry: “I don’t know that you two see it that differently. It seems more like you just aren’t offended by the mind games, whereas Evan was angered by them.” Both of you have quite valid points, nearly none of which I disagree; yet when it comes to personal grounds you are at odds with each other. I think your arguement is based more on personal tastes and approaches to the notion of ‘art’ rather than the quality of the film itself. Seems to me there is nearly nothing that you disagree with each other when it comes to what the film is and what it’s able to achieve.
I think one important arguement of Luke was lost in the midst of all the action: “And so what if Haneke is engaging in manipulation? Every Hollywood film ever made does so—should I accept the emotional manipulation of Sleepless in Seattle, Schindler’s List, and Die Hard but reject that of Funny Games?” This would be my only criticism to your standpoint; because, honestly, making a film is all about manipulation. Michael Moore manipulates you into symphatize with his own political agenda using humor, Schindler’s List abuses hard-to-digest historical facts for emotional manipulation, Requiem for a Dream is mainly an anti-drug propoganda nourished by unique visuals and innovative use of music. I love both of these films but that doesn’t change the fact that art of filmmaking is art at its most manipulative.
Now, Haneke is simply more honest and blatant with this, he pulls the curtains and shows you that when watching a film, you are actually being toyed with all the time. That’s why I think the fact that this film is playing tricks on you should not be enough reason for you to dismiss the whole thing.
As for Luke’s arguements, all the things that he has written so far are valid reasons to like the film; I can say he listed explanations for all of the 6 stars I have seen fit for it (or three stars in your scale). However, the simple reasons as to why I distance myself from Funny Games (namely the unimpressive mission statement, ridiculous similarities with Kubrick films and the fact that Haneke’s film was vastly overshadowed by A Clockwork Orange and other films that he admires etc.) were never among the things he mentioned. The discussion seemed to have revolved around the ‘experimental’ nature of the film and how it should be perceived. That’s why, despite agreeing with nearly everything he says, I still cannot be as optimistic as he is about this film.