Funny Games (1997 film)

Funny Games
File:Funny games cover.jpg
Directed by	Michael Haneke
Written by	Michael Haneke
Produced by	Veit Heiduschka
Starring	Susanne Lothar Ulrich Mühe Arno Frisch Frank Giering
Cinematography	Jürgen Jürges
Edited by	Andreas Prochaska
Release dates	May 14, 1997 (Cannes Film Festival)
Running time	108 min.
Country	Austria
Languages	German French

Funny Games is a 1997 home invasion thriller film directed by the Austrian Michael Haneke. The plot of the film involves two sociopaths who hold a family hostage and torture them with sadistic games.

Plot

The film begins with a well-to-do family — Georg, his wife Anna, his son Schorschi and their dog — arriving at their lake house. Their next-door neighbour pops in to visit, accompanied with two young men, Peter and Paul, whom he introduces as friends. The two men begin imposing themselves on the family's courtesy, and in the process destroy their phone and ruin all their eggs. Eventually a frustrated Anna demands that the men leave, asking Georg to eject them from the premises. Paul breaks Georg's leg with his own golf club and the two men take the family hostage. They force the family to participate in a number of sadistic games in order to stay alive.

Paul asks if the family wants to bet that they will be alive by 9 o'clock in the morning, though he doubts that they will win. Between playing their games, the two men keep up a constant patter, and Paul frequently ridicules Peter's weight and lack of intelligence. He describes a number of contradicting stories of Peter's past, though no conclusion is ever reached as to the men's origins or motives. When some of the family's other neighbours arrive for a visit, Anna passes the men off as friends until the visitors leave. Schorschi eventually escapes to the house next door, but finds the family dead. He attempts to shoot Paul with a rifle, but the gun fails to go off. Paul returns him to the house, along with the gun. After a few more games, the men play a counting-out game between the family members and select Schorschi. They shoot him and leave.

Georg and Anna weep for their loss, but eventually resolve to survive. Anna flees the house while Georg, with a broken leg, tries to get help with the malfunctioning phone. Anna struggles to find help, but eventually Peter and Paul reappear, capture her, and return to the house. They kill Georg and take Anna out on the family's boat. Around eight o'clock, they casually throw the bound Anna into the water to drown, thus winning the bet. They dock at the house of the neighbours that had previously visited the family, and request some eggs, thereby restarting their cycle of murder.

Cast

• Ulrich Mühe as Georg, the father
• Susanne Lothar as Anna, the mother
• Stefan Clapczynski as Schorschi, their young son
• Arno Frisch as Paul, the dominant, intelligent killer
• Frank Giering as Peter, the passive, slow-witted killer

Themes

File:Funnygamesgerman.JPG

Paul smirks at the audience.

The film frequently blurs the line between fiction and reality, especially highlighting the act of observation. The character Paul breaks the fourth wall throughout the movie and addresses the camera in various ways. As he directs Anna to look for her dead dog, he turns, winks, and smirks at the camera. When he asks the family to bet on their survival, he turns to the camera and asks the audience whether they will bet as well. At the end of the film, when requesting eggs from the next family, he looks into the camera and smirks again. Only Paul shows awareness that the film is being observed by the audience.

Paul also frequently states his intentions to follow the standards of movie plot development. When he asks the audience to bet, he guesses that the audience wants the family to win. After the killers vanish in the third act, Paul later explains that he had to give the victims a last chance to escape or else it would not be dramatic. Toward the end of the movie, he refuses to kill the rest of the family because the movie has not yet reached feature length. Throughout the film, Paul shows awareness of the audience's expectations.

However, Paul also causes the film to go against convention on a number of occasions. In thriller movies, one sympathetic character usually survives, but here all three family members die. When Anna successfully shoots Peter, as a possible start to a heroic escape for the family, Paul uses a remote control to rewind the film itself and prevent her action. After Schorschi dies, Paul regrets killing him first because it goes against convention and limits the suspense for the rest of the film. At the end of the film, the murderers prevent Anna from using a knife in the boat to cut her bonds. An earlier close-up had pointed out the knife's location as a possible set-up for a final-act escape, but this becomes a red herring. At the end of the film, Paul again smirks triumphantly at the audience. As a self-aware character, he is able to go against the viewers' wishes and make himself the winner of the film.

After killing Anna, Peter and Paul argue about the line between reality and fiction. Paul believes that a fiction that is observed is just as real as anything else, but Peter dismisses this idea. Unlike Paul, Peter never shows an awareness that he is in a film.

Violence

The version of Funny Games most widely available on DVD in the United States is not rated by the MPAA. Despite being unrated, the film does not feature graphic violence, although almost all of the death and mutilation occurs off-screen.

American remake

An American remake of the film, also entitled Funny Games, is scheduled to be released in early 2008. It stars Tim Roth and Naomi Watts, and is also directed by Michael Haneke.

External links

• Funny Games at IMDb