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Too much of everything

Instant Favorite.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

I think that says it all. Not enough that the movie makes ABSOLUTELY no sense, it also gets you frustrated and angry. Without ANY REASON.I didn't just lose 2 hours of my life that i'm never getting back, I also lose a lot of my brain cells in the process. I have to spit thinking about this movie...

I like Haneke. His films have been getting better since Code Unknown. But I don't have to tolerate this crap. It's a well made film, but what's the point? If you enjoy it, there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with you.And cannot the woman pick up the remote and rewind the film too? Do sick evil monsters only have access to technology?The defenses of this film are much like those for Natural Born Killers. If you like transgressive entertainment, so be it.Leave me out of it. It's like watching Nazis torment concentration camp prisoners, while they laugh and manipulate their victims.

Michael Haneke (MH) is a not so mainstream director (such as Martin Scorsese for example), but he definitely should be. This review will be based 60% in "Funny Games" (FG) and 40% in MH as a director. I find myself very fond of him due to one simple fact: he's a modern-day Stanley Kubrick (SK), which I regard as the best film director/auteur of all time. Dedicated to analyze and explore the dark sides of humanity, he achieves in this film a "funny" portrayal of his point of view about Violence.FG is not for the faint of heart. MH has a distaste of how Hollywood portrays violence in movies, which is an explicit and morbid exploitation, which sometimes reaches unhealthy levels. Talking about violence in the film: the film is violent, but you never get to see violent or bloody images. MH loves to take the attention away from those detailed moments to create expectations and make the audience's imagination start playing "games". The uncertainty of this moments makes the heavy atmosphere of the flick. The greatest example is: when Paul is making himself a sandwich and you hear the gunshot and consequent screams; you feel desperate for knowing what happened. If the movie was made by a USA filmmaker, it is very probably that you could see what happened, in detail.The film walks between fiction and reality. Paul makes various fourth-wall breaks throughout the movie, and he even rewinds the scene where Anna shoots Peter (not allowing that to happen). Peter, on the other hand, refers and critic many aspects of the traditional suspense rules established by USA films. We are accustomed to seeing the protagonist win and live to tell the tale, well, not here. Paul and Peter even have an interesting discussion about fiction and reality at the end of the film, which makes you think about it afterward.Our main villains: charming well-educated sociopaths that will do whatever they please with whoever they want. Taking Paul as the leader, a little perfect Hannibal Lecter (leaving aside Cannibalism and Psychopathy). In the end, they did everything for just one simple aspect: because they could, and no one has ever told them they couldn't do something.Attention is what MH plays within his movies. He demands complete attention from you to understand. Whether it is with Long Shots or never giving explicit detail of what's going on, MH proves to be a skillful manipulator of the audience to achieve this: you leaving the theater wanting more. We are used to finishing a movie totally satisfied with what we saw and how everything ended (happily ever after). Well, not with MH. He wants you to go browsing and find whatever you can about what you just saw. Most than nothing, he wants you to make your OWN conclusions about the story: "Caché" (2005) and "The White Ribbon" (2009) for naming two. MH has between 10 to 15 movies to his name, all of them considered good movies, showing different aspects of humanity (often the dark ones), with a perfect sense of direction and meticulous execution. Tell me if this doesn't remind you of SK: Quality before Quantity. It is also important to state the difference between horror and terror. Horror is for fictional and irrational fears (ghosts and supernatural situations), and terror is for real things (a murderer or an accident). This movie is which? Kind of both isn't it?. On one side, you have a home invasion and in the other an antagonist that can manipulate time and space for achieving success. MH said that the movie was a message about violence in media. He said FG was intended to be neither horror nor terror.Something funny is that MH hates Quentin Tarantino (QT), mostly because he mixes violence and comedy, and his violence is extremely satirical. MH has a violent and bold style for most of his movies. He believes that violence portrayed in movies should have a serious and deep approach, special reason why he despises QT's movies. MH's filming style, psychological approach, and audience manipulation are his greatest weapons. He doesn't fear to make a movie of any theme or genre, and whenever he does, the final product is an instant masterpiece. He made a shot-for-shot remake of FG in 2007 with an entire USA crew. The film received mixed reviews. Why? Because it wasn't the kind of violence and suspense USA audiences like. MH wanted to prove a point, and he succeeded. MY FINAL CONSENSUS: Funny Games is out of the question a different kind of suspense and thriller, but a pretty interesting and effective one. Michael Haneke plays with audiences, in order to bring an excellent law-breaker critic of violence portrayal.

'Funny Games' functions as commentary on violence in movies. It is a simple story of two ostensibly polite and pleasant young men, who take a family hostage and torture and humiliate them. The audience has no escape from the situation, other than finishing the movie or turning it off.The evildoers talk directly to the camera, breaking the fourth wall, and exercise full control over the universe of the movie. They are even able to turn back time if something goes wrong for them. Our sympathies lie with the ordinary, innocent people who happened to cross paths with them, but the movie shows no mercy. It revels in the pain of the family, the pain of losing a family member, the pain of helplessness as you are forced to watch on. It asks, 'Why do we do this? What do we gain by seeing this fictional violence on screen?' and we find that we have no good reason to give.The movie is fully carried by the actors' performances. Each one is given room and freedom, each one has their moments of spotlight. The movie feels like a play: character-driven, cerebral, often told in long, wide shots.I haven't seen the American remake but I hear that it's very similar to the point of identical camera placement.