Funny Games

Does "Funny Games" meet the criteria for "nasty little flick"? Test 1: Half-way through, the viewer looks at watch and realises, "Another hour of this to go." Test 2: The viewer thinks, "I should be pondering the higher meaning of this, instead of concentrating on the action - is it one of those Clockwork Orange things?" So is "Funny Games" more of an American experience than a Central European experience? I don't think so. My guess is that many Americans would feel frustrated: "Why isn't someone kicking #!@%*#?" So what might these "Central European insights" be? Here are 11 obvious answers - you want more than 11? - write your own. #1: It's a metaphor for how the Nazis sneakily trapped Germany's Jews into a Holocaust of gradually escalating horror. #2: It's a metaphor for the trivial grievances and sickening violence of the Baader-Meinhof Gang (Gang? Who? Goto Uri Edel's brilliant semi-documentary, "The Baader Meinhof Complex"). #3: It's an exploration of "values-free" postmodernism (Foucault, etc) - what happens when "common human decency" is deemed to have no meaning? #4: "Pure logic" is by its nature treacherous. There is no such thing as pure logic anyway. #5: Once we've created the most over-privileged generation in history, and they have "everything going for them", where can they go next? #6: Inside each one of us lurks a smiling sadist and/or a cringing victim (inside every Doctor Jekyll a Mr Hyde). #7: It's a movie about movie-making, a sort of ghastly antithesis of Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories". #8: Movies are about manipulation, you fools! (the audience is trapped into a "gotcha" moment, only to have it reversed and replayed). You're "empathising with the characters"? Wrong answer! #9: The meaning of life is that life has no meaning - with the casual and passionless execution of victims. #10: Storytelling is about inserting a single non-realistic element into an otherwise meticulously realistic presentation. #11: Storytelling is really about dragging the (willing?) audience way past the "too long and drawn-out already" point. Phew! All this intellectual pontificating aside, "Funny Games" will be for some viewers an intensely involving experience, with classic horror mechanisms, snappy editing, and a nifty surprise ending. But you may come away with the feeling that Michael Haneke is altogether too talented for his own good.