I can't say I generally watch films that engage the viewer the way "Funny Games" does.
It isn't a film about happy endings, story, character or even morals. I see it as a film set on drawing reactions from the audience to illustrate the moral corruption that film has had upon all of our lives. The movie follows a family on vacation who are targeted by serial killers, and it looks into the way the media treat violence.
The 2007 film, from the onset, tries to make you feel uncomfortable with musical selections and awkward dialogue. The other distinct aesthetic choice is the camera. Director Michael Haneke's use of long takes without a cut furthers the discomfort, because modern audiences are accustomed to quick action with about five camera shots in a second. I actually recognize this style from another of Haneke's films, "Caché." That piece uses security cameras to speak about the voyeurism of modern society with cameras readily available to watch anyone.
The audience is meant to be the victim not just in this film, but in countless films portraying senseless violence as entertainment. It explores how violence itself has crept into cinema, sneaking onto the screen while viewers passively let it in. Only Batman seems to take the moral high ground, limiting his violence to an extent.
For a film about violence, very few acts are committed on screen. Murder, broken bones and such are mostly offscreen. Haneke shows that movies have ingrained so much graphic violence into our retinas that even when it happens away from the frame, we still picture it in our mind's eye. Haneke wants the audience to be aware of the problems with violent entertainment. This is his answer to "Saw," "Pulp Fiction" and other graphically violent films.
Maybe one of the most unsettling parts, for American viewers especially, who are used to Hollywood endings, is that these "good" characters fall victim with no repercussions to the killers.
The audience feels the pain along with the characters when all their hope is gone, and this is enforced by breaking the fourth wall on multiple occasions. The viewer is invited to be an active part of the film by direct address, but even that is a cruel game because no audience member can change the film. I can't do anything to save these characters.
I have to ask what Haneke is trying to accomplish by excluding all hope and heroics. The characters appear inept and unable to escape their situations. Is he truly this dark of a director? Is there no hope for humanity?
I like to believe that within all of us is a hero capable of great good when the adrenaline pumps. "Funny Games" is the contrary, showing that events like the Holocaust are capable by humanity and that few are willing to stand up and stop it.
So, is this film a parallel to the Holocaust? Through strung out metaphors and connections maybe, but not directly.
Haneke knew exactly what he wanted to do with this film.
"[My films] are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus," Haneke said in the past.
He wants us to understand and change the way we see cinema. We need to avoid the mindlessness of a Hollywood blockbuster and focus on deeper questions about humanity.
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