Funny games [Widescreen] (D)

It is the beginning of the summer holidays and a rich Austrian family prepare to begin their vacation at their rural estate. Their peace is shattered however when two seemingly nice young men arrive at their door and begin a series of cruel and violent games which culminate in torture and murder. Austrian director Michael Haneke directed a trilogy of films in the 1990s, (“The Seventh Continent”, “71 Fragments for a Chronology of Chance” and “Benny’s Video”) which all examined the relationship between violence, crime, media and class. But “Funny Games” takes Haneke’s critical examination one step further by this time implicating “us” - the audience - in his condemnation of modern mass media. Harrowing, intensely disturbing and frightening, “Funny Games” exploits our voyeuristic thrill in watching mayhem and violence. By refusing to either conform to the established conventions of the horror/thriller genre or to the simplistic explanations and sociology of most realist art-house cinema, Haneke instead indicts the modern cinema audience for not only our acceptance of film violence but our own complicity in encouraging the escalation of a violent and alienated society. This is a film that will start arguments. Countering the dominance of post-modern theories which argue that contemporary cinema audiences are media-literate and ironically resistant to manipulation, Haneke instead responds with a film that reinstates the necessity of the ethical and committed intellectual. Whatever intellectual position one takes to this film - and make no mistake, Haneke demands intellectual engagement as a moral imperative - this is not a film that can be easily dismissed. A film for which the adjective “shocking” is not hyperbole. This film is truly frightening. Cast includes Susanne Lothar and Franc Geiring. In German with English subtitles.