The Showreel: Michael Haneke – Five films

WYNDHAM HACKET PAIN DISCUSSES THE FILMS WHICH HAVE MADE MICHAEL HANEKE ONE OF EUROPE’S LEADING FILMMAKERS

FUNNY GAMES

Funny Games tells the story of a bourgeois family who are trapped within their own home and in turn tortured by their captors. The mastery of the film is Haneke’s ability to make the images on screen increasingly painful, while denying the audience the cathartic pressure of violence. Viewing pleasure and images of violence often coexist within films, and Haneke is able to show how perverse this relationship is.

CODE UNKNOWN

The film opens with a street incident, which centres around racial tensions and social unease, and intermittently follows those who are involved. Nothing is explained and it is left to the viewer to imagine the surrounding events. Above all, the film feels like an observation, with the apparently diffuse aspects of the film only linked by small details and enigmatic characters. Code Unknown makes us question our assumptions of reality, both within cinema and in real life.

CACHÉ

Haneke has always had a penchant for the topic of voyeurism but it has never been as clear as it is in Caché. The film tells the story of a middle class couple who are sent a series of anonymous video tapes. When it becomes apparent that these tapes are linked to a tragic episode from the past, feelings of guilt and revenge surface. Images of bright red blood link the past and present together. Generations are bonded through tragedy and the sins of the past seem to prevent any kind of present day redemption.

THE WHITE RIBBON

Set on the eve of the First World War, The White Ribbon depicts the vanishing of social order within a small German Town. Haneke had previously shown in Caché and Funny Games that he does not believe in the blamelessness of youth, and in The White Ribbon it has never been so clear, as the children of the town terrorise its inhabitants with acts of evil.

AMOUR

Many asked if Michael Haneke had mellowed with the release of Amour. The provocateur who had shocked audiences with his previous films moved his gaze inwards, towards the human heart. Haneke, though, is unflinching in his examination of an elderly couple, as illness and death arrive to end their long marriage. The moral grandeur which defines much of his work is clear to see. Haneke’s work has always had ruthless clarity, but it has rarely had such compassion. Amour, only a few years after its release, already has the air of permanence.