Never has violence been less palatable on screen than in Micheal Haneke's 1997 masterpiece Funny Games; it is as close to truly disturbing as film is capable of being.
Over the past decade – which introduced the “torture porn” genre to the mainstream movie-goer by way of such films franchises as Saw and Hostel – the visceral impact of the violence seen in Funny Games might have been reduced to new audiences. Many of the acts of sudden, graphic violence that shocked audiences in '97 – the death of a young boy at gun-point, the torturing of a dog heard off-screen – have been reproduced many times in horror films since. There are few boundaries left in cinema; when Funny Games was released, Don't Kill Pets and Don't Kill Children were still sworn-by rules of screen-writing. Since, both have been broken routinely in the horror genre. But Funny Games wasn't the ground-work for the torture porn genre; instead, it attempted to warned its audiences of the coming emergence of the genre.
The plot is simple: Anna and Georg, played by Susanne Lothar (The Reader, The White Ribbon) and Ulrich Mühe (Benny's Video), are vacationing at their rural cabin, with their son Schorschi, played by Stefan Clapczynski. Soon after their arrival, the family are visited by two well-dressed and seemingly well-educated young men: Paul, played chillingly by Arno Frisch (Benny's Video), and Peter, played by Frank Giering (Absolute Giganten). They ask to borrow eggs, and claim to be friends of the neighbouring cabin.
Very soon, it become apparent that the family are being held hostage in their own house. The violence Peter and Paul inflict on the them is completely without motivation – something Sawand Hostel both weren't brave enough to omit.
Georg: "Why are you doing this to us?"
Paul: "Why not?"
The utterly senseless torture of the family isn't nearly as disturbing as our complacence in it. Upon first viewing, Haneke knows his audience better than we know ourselves. We believe that we only continue to watch Funny Games because we are empathizing with its characters, and hope to see them escape from their captor's sardonic “games”; but Haneke knows that, in reality, his audience share more of an interest with Peter and Paul. By watching, we are complicate.
When the family first ask the young pair to leave their cabin, Paul asks Anna where the family's dog is; he mentions that it was been a awhile since he has heard him bark. The family begin to search while the pair give them clues, by way of “hotter” and “colder”. Tension builds for some time. As Anna is nearing the place we know the dogs corpse must be, Paul turns his head to the audience, and breaks the forth-wall with a wink.
This is Haneke's way of telling us who's side we are really on. We aren't suffering along with the family, we are indulging in their pain. When Georg asks the pair why the want to hurt them, the question could just as easily be directed at the audience: Why are you watching this?
Michael Haneke is alleged to have told his producer, Veit Heiduschka, during the production of Funny Games, that “if the film is a success, it would be because audiences had misunderstood the meaning behind it.”
