UFC: "Funny Games" - Media + Violence = Overused Horseshit

Welcome everyone to my first edition of a little weekly thing I'm starting to do called UFC: Ultimate Film Champion. The basis of this column is, of course, to watch some fine movies. Many know that I am a reviewer, but many don't know is how I like to analyze films more than I like to criticize them. So, I have a list of films at home that many tell me that are brilliant and I analyze them. No one recommended "Funny Games" to me... it just came from the blue sky as I watched the remake in theaters. These columns will be always longer than a traditional review, be a little bit more objective, and will give away many spoilers. In addition to all of that, I will be discussing the film's themes and ideas. The column will come out every Monday, but it's out early this week because I'm tired and will have almost no time to post it tomorrow. So thanks for reading and I hope you like what you find.


“Funny Games” (1997 and 2008)
Both directed by Michael Haneke


Please note that before you read ANY further that there will be tons and tons of spoilers. It’s nothing that I really can help while writing an essay for this movie, because I got enough points to bring up that I know I’ll give away the ending. Also, please realize I’m reviewing TWO movies – “Funny Games” from 1997… and “Funny Games” from 2008. The films have almost everything in common – the second film is a shot-by-shot remake, which means that EVERYTHING is the same. Think of Gus Van Sant’s abomination of “Psycho.”


After being a film critic for about twenty-some months or so, I have realized three things since arriving to the world of movie blogging and bullshitting…

1. Everyone on the outside-looking-in hates you. They will disagree with you because instead of watching “Norbit,” a film that made one-hundred million, you watch a film like “Zodiac” that only made thirty-three million. You know better than to trust teenagers when they say that they know movies… well most of them at least (excluding me, of course).

2. The public wants to see you humiliated. Not because it would make a good laugh (but you can always take the good laugh into account), but because they simply disagree with you. If you’re not on the bandwagon with the general public, then you are considered an outsider. You are considered as a fucking idiot. And I don’t care WHAT you say, “The Bourne Ultimatum” isn’t nearly as good as the first two were.

3. I didn’t have a third reason, other than having to repeat number two again.

Everyone has a filmmaker that they consider to be a great. Jerry loves Brian De Palma, Kelsey loves Wes Craven, and Royce loves Joss Wheldon. I think of many directors being great – Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Kevin Smith, Steven Spielberg, and Robert Rodriguez are a few of them. And dare you talk shit about any of them in front of me, I will be sticking the nearest thing that is twenty inches straight up your cornshooter.

There are some, though, that lead some of the biggest followings from such a small group of people. Takishi Miike, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Werner Herzog lead a small but very dedicated fan group. I couldn’t call myself fans of all of the three, but I enjoy some of their films. It takes guts to call yourself a fan of these guys. You ask a college kid if they saw the latest Spielberg movie and they’ll say yes. You ask the same college kid if they saw Takishi Miike’s latest movie, they’ll look at you like you have twenty penises.

But dare you talk negative about them…

Along with that pair is a little known Australian director called Michael Haneke. I never heard of him before watching the film, and only saw a few minutes of “Cache” and didn’t know enough to know who he was. After searching around the internet for a little bit, I have come to notice that there are some die-hard Haneke fans. What else did I come to find out? Most of them consider “Funny Games” to be their favorite film of his.

For those of you unaware of what “Funny Games” is about, a wealthy family (in the Austrian version played by Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Muhe, and Stefan Clapczynski and in the American version played by Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Devon Gearhart) travel to their vacation home, where they plan to do what most rich families do – play golf, fish out in their very open lake, and socialize with other rich people. Everything seems to be normal… until two men dressed in white outfits (in the Austrian version played by Arno Frisch and Frank Giering and in the American version played by Michael Pitt and Brady Corbit) intrude their home, break the father’s leg, and force them to play a game in which they will be dead in twelve hours.

First off, I don’t know much about Haneke to analyze him, but the way that I see him after “Funny Games,” he HATES everything that is popular. Never jumps on the bandwagon and hates everything that everyone else likes. “Funny Games” is, without a doubt, the movie that will show you how much Michael Haneke hates clichés in movies. Yes clichés. You know, the 555 shit on the phone numbers and final girls. Some will say it is skewering clichés, but it’s not even THAT. Michael Haneke made a film where there is not a single cliché to be found. It’s not to make fun of clichés, but it is to ignore every single cliché in general and make a film that relies on something other than clichés – giving the audience the complete opposite of what they are expecting.

Although the point can’t be ignored that this was never Haneke’s true intention of “Funny Games,” it leads you to question his actual methods of the film. On the remake’s official website lies an essay from Haneke himself (it’s on there, you just have to keep clicking for it). He argues about how violence is portrayed in the media. He says that within these past few years, the audience as changed the way the media portrays violence. Torture-porn, a phrase coined by David Edelstein once “Hostel” was released back in January 2006, wasn’t known of back when “Funny Games” was originally released in 1997. He says, and I quote, “The complete change of interchangeability of content devoid of all reality ensures that everything that is portrayed will be utterly fictitious, giving the audience a pleasant sense of security.”

Do you get that you little teenaged boppers? The things that you see in “Hostel” and “Turistas?” They aren’t real. Do you actually think that anyone pours blood onto their boobs and sticks a cheese-grater up their genitalia? No. Now let’s continue…

Later on in the article, Haneke asks, and I quote once again, “… how can we make the audience aware of their role in the loss of reality? How can the viewer be transformed from the media victim to potential participant?” This is explained by the scenes where one of the two killers occasionally looks into the camera, smiles, winks, or talks to you, or called in the movie business “breaking the fourth wall.” In "Funny Games,” when the killers break the fourth wall, it make the viewer feel like that they are right there with the killers. Only one of the two in both films actually know that they are in the movie, so to speak, so both of the same characters look at you, smile, tell you to place bets, and join along with the fun. They’re putting on the show FOR YOU.

Many people have a problem with the film’s climax. In this scene, the mother reaches for the shotgun and takes out one of the killers. The one, that realizes that he is a movie, grabs a remote and rewinds it back to the scene. Now, when she goes for the shotgun, he pulls it back from her and shoots the husband. What this is trying to show is that in most of these movies, the whole deal where a hero against two villains tries to fight their way back and win the battle happens too many times. It becomes literally predictable and nowadays whenever you see it, you finally understand how unrealistic the film you’re watching is. By rewinding it, Haneke fooled with your emotions, your thoughts, and you.

At the end, Haneke makes notice that those heroic films are complete bullshit. If you pull a gun out at a family in their home, they will surrender and you are free to do whatever you want as long as you leave them alone. In film, it doesn’t work out like that. You are usually occupied with someone who is so dimwitted where you would be surprised that they could fire a gun. The killers from both movies point out the film’s message to the viewers the way it should be pointed out – what you see in the movies aren’t real, but what is real you will never see in the movies.

Have you ever seen a film where you want to root for the villains instead of the heroes? I’m not talking about anti-heroes, but rather I’m talking about plain old villains, the ones back in the days that were always dressed up in black. By sticking us with these two rather unlikely villains, he shows us that everyone can be a villain, and it could be people that you least expect it. The villains here are two villains, dressed in white, that are rather polite but very demanding.

Within these past few years, directors have made villains look tough and over-the-top. Whether you are Jigsaw, a rehash of Michael Myers or Leatherface, or the killers from “Hostel,” if you can kill someone, you are the scariest thing around. If you’re walking around with blood on your shoes, you are considered to be the villain. But by these two villains acting polite, you can see that by saying please and thank you, it frightens you and the victims in the film, which makes you uneasy and shakey.

One of the killers says at the last moment that “the family was in reality, but the hero is in fiction.” But the other killer forms a rebuttal and says that if the fiction is real, because by watching it on film, it’s just as real as what we see in the media. I think that most that are reading this article are too old to figure out that the boogeyman isn’t real, but I also think that nowadays the boogeyman is considered to be an icon in the media. Those bastards in the media have figured out that the boogeyman is our deepest fear, so they have tried to come up with a logical reason as to why we fear him so much. By stalking teenaged girls, stacking bodies after bodies in garages, and haunting your dreams, there is a different kind of boogeyman that we now fear – the boogeyman of the media.

Of course, everyone has a different view of what is the boogeyman. Some will say Michael Myers is the ultimate boogeyman, while others will disagree and say that Freddy Kruger is. Remember at the beginning of the article when I was talking about how people will jump on top of you for disagreeing with you? Well, followers of Haneke will agree that the ultimate boogeymen are these two killers.

I’ve been going on about this for years now. Horror villains just aren’t scary anymore. What can you get from a killer like Jigsaw? A mess, of course. The real kinds of terror are the things that you read in the news. You know the stories that read how three people are found dead and one is missing? That’s the real horror. To call the villains in “Funny Games” horror villains is like calling Dane Cook a comedian, but what about calling them realistic? In both films, the villains keep calm of the situation throughout the entire movie. Once the family comes to their demise is when we can finally see the true horror of what goes on in the world, and these villains are the ultimate boogeymen.

“Funny Games” is disturbing, insecure, and frightening. It’s anything BUT funny.



NEXT WEEK ON UFC: The folks over on MySpace have spoken. I will re-watch a film that is usually called Takishi Miike’s best film. I would say otherwise (the award would go to “Audition” in my personal opinion), but maybe my thoughts would change after this watch. Next week – “Ichi the Killer.”