Funny Games [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Michael Haneke Michael Haneke

Overview

In this exploration of our violent society, writer and director Michael Haneke takes a disturbing look at how depictions of violence at once reflect and shape our culture. A well-to-do German family -- father Georg (Ulrich Mühe), mother Anna (Susanne Lothar), and son Georgie (Stefan Clapczynski) -- are settling in for the weekend at their vacation retreat near the lake. While Georg and his son head out for some sailing, a courteous young gentleman named Peter (Frank Giering) appears at the door, asking if he can borrow some eggs. When he breaks them, Anna offers him some more, but the conversation soon takes an odd turn; Peter goes from pleasant to sniveling to confrontational, and he's soon joined by his friend Paul (Arno Frisch). When Georg returns, he demands that Paul and Peter leave, but the two strangers refuse; Paul and Peter react with violence against Georg and his family, and they soon have the family tied up and begin torturing them. Peter and Paul occasionally refer to the camera in a manner recalling Bertolt Brecht, and near the end of the film, they even demand the opportunity to replay a scene so that they may mete out more punishment against their victims. The score includes classical selections by Mozart and Handel as well as performances by avant-garde composer John Zorn.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/14/2019
UPC:	0715515229715
Original Release:	1997
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:49:00
Sales rank:	8,258

Special Features

New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Michael Haneke, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack; New interviews with Haneke and actor Arno Frisch; New interview with film historian Alexander Horwath; Press conference from the 1997 Cannes Film Festival featuring Haneke and actors Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe; Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Susanne Lothar	Anna
Ulrich Muhe	Georg
Frank Giering	Peter
Arno Frisch	Paul
Stefan Clapezynski	Georgie
Doris Kunstmann	Gerda
Christoph Bantzer	Fred
Wolfgang Gluck	Robert
Susanne Meneghel	Gerda's Sister
Monika von Zallinger II	Eva
Monika Zallinger	Actor
George Frideric Handel	Composer
Pietro Mascagni	Composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	Composer
John Zorn	Composer

Technical Credits

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke	Director,Screenwriter
Veit Heiduschka	Producer
Walter Amann	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Michael Haneke's Funny Games initially takes on the rhythms of a typical thriller. The elements are familiar -- an air-brushed upper-class family, a glittering house in the country, the sudden intrusion of brutality. As it becomes clear early on, however -- about the time one of the movie's villains winks at us after murdering the family dog -- there is more on the movie's mind than your garden-variety mayhem. As difficult to sit through as it is to dismiss, Haneke's movie is a hectoring critique of the violence that pervades pop culture, and how much of a role we play in perpetuating such moral bankruptcy. With his winking killers, who name themselves after pop-culture icons (Tom and Jerry at one point, Beavis and Butt-Head the next), Haneke seeks to lay bare the audience's complicity in media depictions of violence and sexual exploitation. That the movie is unrelenting in its punishment and extravagant in its sadism is the point. Stripping the sexy sheen off violence, Haneke forces us to consider the charge we get from cool gunfights and Bruckheimer-esque explosions. The problem with Haneke's vision is its blinkered high-mindedness. Excessively brutal, shamelessly moralistic, and irredeemably didactic, Funny Games can only accomplish its sadistic mission by outright underestimating its audience's intelligence and sensitivity. That the movie does have something of value to say about the casual debasement of human beings in pop culture makes Haneke's haughty presumptuousness all the more unfortunate.

All Movie Guide