You Are Part of This
After Michael Haneke was selected, I began my research to select a film — Funny Games was the one that caught my eye. I had already learned by then that his films can be difficult and uncomfortable to watch, and this one was no different. A third of the audience walked out during its Cannes premiere in 1997. How often do you think that happens? It didn't stop Haneke from filming a shot-for-shot remake ten years later. That tells you everything about his intentions.
When you watch Funny Games you cannot avoid feeling the following: shock, disbelief, disappointment, pity, disgust — but also hope. That hope is what makes it so devastating. It is why I did not particularly enjoy watching it, and sure as hell do not want to see it again. Or the remake.
But do not misunderstand — the film contains no actual scenes of brutality. Everything is implied. And that implication forces you to participate whether you like it or not. By connecting the dots, by following the subtle hints Haneke leaves scattered through the film, you have made yourself part of the story. You have done the work. The violence lives in your head because you constructed it there.
You are dragged into the game when addressed directly by Paul — making you, in some way, responsible for what is happening.
This is the film's most destabilising trick: Paul, one of the two central figures of disruption, breaks the fourth wall and speaks to you. Directly. In doing so, Haneke raises one of the defining behaviours of the sociopathic mind — the evasion of responsibility — and takes it not just a step further but a mile. He makes the audience complicit, then dares you to feel comfortable about it.
Funny Games sticks with you. In the days that followed I found myself turning over its dimensions, its symbolism, its implications. The questions it left behind were not film questions — they were real ones. About sociopathy, about our addiction to comfort, about the fragility of the human spirit, about how far any of us would go to save our lives. About why most people are so poor at reading the intentions of others until it is far too late.
These are not film questions. They are real ones — and Haneke knows exactly what he is doing by forcing you to ask them.
I have not particularly enjoyed this experience and I do not recommend it lightly. But it is one of the most precise and intentional pieces of filmmaking I have encountered — a film that knows exactly what it is doing at every moment, including the moments that make you want to look away.