Five-Legged Iguana

FUNNY GAMES U.S.
(Review)

"I've been accused of 'raping' the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely—all movies assault the viewer in one way or another. What's different about my films is this: I'm trying to rape the viewer into independence."
-- Michael Haneke

Well, consider me frakked.

In Michael Haneke’s shot-for-shot English-language remake of his 1997 Funny Games, George and Ann Farber (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts) are a couple of rich, white folk vacationing at their lakeside home for a couple of weeks. They’ve brought their son, Georgie (Devon Gearhart), and their dog, Lucky.
Naturally, in a film like this, when there’s a dog named “Lucky,” you can bet your bottom dollar that the mutt will be anything but.
You see, a pair of insanely courteous young lunatics (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) clad in immaculate white, are about to make a house call, all set to torture, not just the unlucky family, but the film’s audience as well.

With the cold, clinical precision that is his cinematic stock-in-trade, Haneke basically hijacks his audience and unleashes a confrontational and provocative indictment of what passes off as “entertainment” in today’s culture.
Funny Games U.S. (and its original Austrian progenitor) challenges its audience: so you like movies where people get tortured and terrorized? Well, see if you enjoy this.
With its largely static camerawork, its lack of a traditional musical score, and painfully frank performances, Funny Games U.S. presents the horrible scenario in a seemingly very real manner, while simultaneously tearing down the fourth wall on a number of occasions, reminding us that, A) this is a fiction, and B) we, the audience, are complicit in what we are witnessing.
Because this is, after all, unfolding for our entertainment.
Given that this is a decidedly non-Hollywood approach to the idea, and given that this is clearly Heneke’s agenda, it becomes obvious that Funny Games U.S. isn’t meant to be “entertainment.”
From all of what I’ve said above, it’s plainly evident that Funny Games U.S. is meant to be “art.”
And that’s I believe the sticking point of this entire quandary.

Let me use Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible as an example.
Irreversible is the sort of grueling cinematic experience that I really wouldn’t want to repeat. Viewing it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
But I do appreciate what Noe seems to be saying in it, the manner in which the narrative unfolds (begin at the end of the story in a very chaotic, nauseating manner, and work our way towards the beginning, with the camerawork gradually becoming calm and steady), part and parcel of his message.
Clearly, Irreversible is not entertainment. But I do believe that it is art.
So what’s to stop someone who makes a film that’s non-stop degradation and torture without any apparent message from claiming that there is, after all, a message (those who don’t “get it” merely ill-equipped to understand), and that his film is “art”?
And aren’t the lines that separate art and entertainment ultimately subjective?
Let’s face it: I may think Irreversible is art, but someone else will probably denounce it as filth and look at me like some sort of unhinged deviant for even considering Irreversible as a piece of art.
By the same token, I’m sure there are films out there others consider “art” that I, personally, just don’t get. (Apparently, I too, can be ill-equipped.)
Then there are those films that are ostensibly entertainment, and yet manage to say something substantial and potent about the human condition, that manage to bridge the gap and present some sort of hybrid.
Are they entertainment? Art? Or both?

Now, any Iguana regulars reading this will know that horror with significant subtext is pretty much my speed. As such, Haneke’s preaching to the choir here. (See, Herr Haneke, “No” really does mean “No.”)
But the reality is, I also happen to love films like the first Saw and Eli Roth’s Hostel films (particularly the second), because in them, I feel there is subtext, there are messages amidst the gore and the grue.
Now, whether or not Haneke will agree with me, I’ll never know. And for that matter, where is Haneke’s line, his personal demarcation between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” violence?
Shouldn’t all violence be unacceptable? But in a frank discussion of violence (the kind art can engage in), isn’t the depiction of it a necessity?
And with any depiction of violence, don’t we return to the question of acceptability? How much can we show so as to make our point?
So many questions…

In asking what Herr Haneke’s personal demarcation is though, I believe I’m missing the real point, which is, What is my personal demarcation? Where do I draw the line?
And where do you?

Parting shot: Reviews of Saw and Hostel II can be found in the Archive.

Parting shot 2: Incidentally, both Haneke and Noe were included by avclub.com in a list of 17 “Notorious Living, Working Cinematic Provocateurs,” which uses Haneke’s New York Times quote in its title.
Others on the list include Park Chan-Wook, Takashi Miike, Oliver Stone, Lars von Trier, and Michael Moore.

(Funny Games U.S. OS [design by Crew Creative Advertising] and UK quad courtesy of impawards.com; Funny Games DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; Funny Games U.S. images courtesy of ign.com.)