Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher) channels his anger with mainstream media depiction of violence into a horrific and highly entertaining piece of cinema. Starring Naomi Watts, Tim Roth.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2008
Funny Games 2007
Naomi Watts and Tim Roth star as a picture perfect couple on a lakeside vacation with their son. Their idyllic life is shattered when a pair of polite yet psychopathic house guests announce themselves... Austrian auteur Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher) literally returns to his old stomping ground in this shot-for-shot remake of his incendiary 1997 classic Funny Games. The home-invasion plot and its attendant brutalisation are used to turn the tables on the viewer, taunting our appetite for on-screen sadism as vicarious entertainment. A decade on, the remake is as gruelling to watch as the original, and the message is undiluted. Preying upon middle-class paranoia, Haneke‘s disintegration of the cinematic fourth wall is both masterful and manipulative. Funny Games is a real audience divider, a thought provoking love-it-or-hate-it experience that shoots you in the eye as you squirm in your seat. — MS