A rough translation of the red sticker on tickets to Funny Games reads: "Please note. This film contains some scenes audiences may find shocking." With such a warning, Michael Haneke's exploration of audiences' relationship to on-screen violence joins the likes of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, which screened out of Competition in 1992 with a similar caution attached to tickets.
That festival director Gilles Jacob selected Funny Games for Competition may well lead some to conclude it is less shocking than Tarantino's heist-gone-wrong bloodbath. Certainly, no-one will complain they were not warned.
Haneke says Funny Games "looks like a thriller, but is actually about thrillers". The innocuous start has Anna and Georg, a couple played by Susanne Lothar (Das Schloss, Tatort) and Ulrich Muehe (Nachts, Das Schloss), arriving a lakeside house with their young son Georgie (Stefan Clapczynski) for a holiday. In between rigging up their sailing boat and rounds of golf, Anna prepares supper. Peter, a guest of their neighbours, played by Frank Giering (Die Halbstarken, Die Kids von Berlin), arrives to ask for some eggs.
Even sales agent World Sales Christa Saredi is not saying what happens next. "Gilles Jacob told us not to show the film or even talk about it," says head of sales, Andrea Klein. "We don't know whether that's because of the violence. It's certainly a disturbing film."
Haneke is slightly more revealing. "We agreed not to go into detail about how we develop the film's themes. If I took the film apart, the effect might be lost."
But he is more than willing to explain why he aims to shock. "Violence has become reduced to a consumable commodity diluted with humour to make it palatable," he begins. "How can I restore to my representation the value of reality which it has lost? Or, in other words: how do I give the viewer the possibility of indeed perceiving this loss of reality and his own involvement therein, so that he may thereby free himself from being a victim of the medium and become its potential partner?"
And he is unequivocal about the effect he aims to achieve. "I try to find ways of representing violence as that which it always is: as inconsumable. I give back to violence that which it is: pain, a violation of others."
Haneke's dialogue with violence began with Pasolini and Visconti. "For me, Vaghe stelle dell'orsa [Of A Thousand Delights] was a shock. That was the first time I saw violence portrayed like that in the cinema. Films like that didn't portray violence as spectacular. They gave you another view, and afterwards left the audience seeing violence differently."
That was 20 years ago. Haneke has since explored the theme through his trilogy Der Siebente Kontinent (1989), Benny's Video (1992) and 71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls (1994), which played in Critics' Fortnight. Benny's Video touched on the consequences of film and the media's portrayal of violence by focusing on the mental state of "a video junkie", as Haneke puts it.
"Film, as an art form, has a moral duty to the audience," asserts the director, whose credits also include Das Schloss (1995). "Making violence consumable, reducing its effect and brutalising the audience must surely have grave moral consequences."
Jacob's decision to award the $2 million Funny Games a Competition slot may testify to Haneke's belief in film's moal duty. The decision may equally testify to a lack of explicit scenes - "there's more actual violence on screen in an evening TV drama," says Haneke. "Audiences don't have to see violence. Letting their imaginations take over is far worse."
Either way, Haneke insists that the red sticker is not hype. "Whether the audience leaves outraged or enthusiastic, I promise they won't leave indifferent."
Adam Minns
Prod Co: WEGA-Film
Prod: Veit Heiduschka
Dir/Scr: Michael Haneke
Ph: Juergen Juerges
Art dir: Chrtoph Kanter
Cos: Lisy Christl
Ed: Andreas Prochaska
Cast: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Muehe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering
Running time: 103 mins
Int sales: World Sales Christa Saredi
