Funny Games

There are two precedents for the new Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s 2008 remake of his own 1997 meta-thriller of the same name: Alfred Hitchcock’s pair of Man Who Knew Too Muches (1934 and 1956), and Gus Van Sant’s 1998 ‘shot-for-shot’ remake of Psycho. The fact that both connect directly back to the Master himself is a happy coincidence, and a good point of entry – Funny Games, a tale of vacationing suburbanites whose summer home is invaded by a pair of sadistic psychotics in golf shirts and white gloves, is perhaps best viewed as the sort of coolly cinematic chiller than Hitchcock would have loved – or even made.

Funny Games opens with a bird’s eye view of a station-wagon gliding down a tree-lined highway, trailing a gleaming sailboat. Behind the wheel is handsome dad George (Tim Roth), with chipper mum Anne (Naomi Watts) at his side and their towheaded 12-year old son, Georgie (Brady Corbet), in the back seat. For a few minutes, we watch them play a friendly game of name-that-opera, when a vicious blast of non-diagetic death metal invades the scene of upper-class suburban domesticity; there are far more nasty games at play here than Verdi trivia. For shortly after arriving at their security-fenced lake house, the family will meet two charming twenty-something preppies who first ask to borrow eggs, then to try out George’s golf clubs. Then they use the clubs on George.

I confess to being a bit puzzled by the critical response to Funny Games. As of a week after its premiere, the picture had a score of 40 (“mixed or average reviews”) on Metacritic. No less than A. O. Scott in the New York Times declared the film “a fraud.” In the New Yorker, Anthony Lane gently praised Haneke’s skill, while asserting that the director has “fallen behind the times.” J. Hoberman went even further – imploring readers to avoid the movie at all costs: “Professional obligations required that I endure it, but there's no reason why you should.”

The sticking point, as it were, lies in what most critics identify as Funny Games’ supposedly ‘Brechtian’ self-awareness. Nearly very review of the picture mentions the moments (there are three), in which Michael Pitt, playing the more stable of the two psychotic preppies (it’s a fine line), directly addresses the camera. Early in the picture, Pitt’s character explains to Anne, George and Georgie, what the plan for the evening will be: a bet over whether or not the three loving family members will live to see the dawn. At which point, the immaculately coiffed actor turns to the camera and asks: “What about you? You’re on their side, right?”

So far, the critical conversation on this film has unwisely (and inaccurately) pounced upon this twisted self awareness to accuse the film of preaching to its audience – of punishing them for enjoying the violence of American movies, as long as it is followed by a cathartic release in which the tortured can turn the tables on the torturers. But what sin, exactly, has Haneke committed? The villain in Funny Games is not the sadistic pair in boat shoes (variously calling themselves Paul and Peter, Tom and Jerry, or Beavis and Butthead), but the television in the corner of the room where Anne, George and Georgie are teased, tortured, beaten, forced to strip, and eventually killed. Has Haneke struck too close to home?

I suspect that the outraged response to this slyly comic thriller will someday be seen as a bit overblown. Until then, fans of Hitchcock and Haneke alike can sit back and enjoy the surgical cutting, the cheeky wit, the set-ups and surprising pay-offs, and the deliciously sick ending, which brings the cycle of death back full circle, with a knock at the door. Let the games begin.