Hollywood's Most Un-Hollywood Film: Funny Games

Hollywood's Most Un-Hollywood Film: Funny Games
by David J. LeMaster

I was attracted to Funny Games because of the preview, an ingenious mix of graphic violence with Greig's musical delight, "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from the Peer Gynt Suite.  If you don't recognize the musical reference, you will as soon as you hear the music--it's rhythmic, fast-moving, and comedic--leading you to believe the movie is going to be as well.  The preview is purposefully misleading.

Why did writer/director Michael Haneke make this film?   For most movies, this is an easy-to-answer question: the director had a statement to make about society, or he wanted to explore a psychological profile; he wanted to shed light on a problem, he wanted to reveal what happened to him in real life, or he wanted to expose a fault by holding a mirror to society.  The most common answer is the director just wanted to entertain his audience (or, in everyday English, he wanted to make money).  However, none of these answers apply to Haneke's Funny Games.  The film satirizes upper class society to an extent, but that's certainly not the focus.  Had Haneke desired to do so, he could have explored two fascinating criminal minds, but there is no effort whatsoever to delve into their inner thoughts or motivations.  He certainly satirizes the traditional family, seems to address class conflict, and attacks the relationship of the cultured, refined rich with the wanna-be's.  But not one of these themes is fully explored.

Instead, Haneke plays a series of "funny games" on the audience, setting up great expectations and then paying them off with cruel jokes.  As a result, we the audience feel victimized, which appears to be Haneke's intention.
 
Haneke's opening sequence shows a family driving to its vacation home for the summer and playing the ultimate car game--guess the classical piece and composer.  If this game doesn't appeal to the common man, neither should the family dynamic, as the young boy sits in the back seat, neither bored nor angry, as most young boys would be, but completely enraptured in the game.  We hear the exchange as we watch the car drive for an inordinate period of time, and without seeing the faces of the speakers.  This establishes a convention used throughout the film--with the exception of just one of the many acts, the violence occurs off-screen, including the first grisly murder, which happens as we watch one of two abductors raid a refrigerator and find our imaginations working overtime as we hear screams from the room next door.  The effect is chilling and disconcerting; it's also alienating, as is the entire film.

The alienation is further created at the end of the opening sequence when, after the overly-long exchange, the camera settles into a shot of the family and the classical music is interrupted by the disturbing sounds of John Zorn and Naked City from the album, Grand Guignol.  The music provides a number of good jokes from the director to an unsuspecting audience; first, we are lulled into complacency only to be thrown into the violence of the song (and consequently the film); second, the jolt is awe-inspiring and daring and makes the audience admire Haneke's ability to manipulate; and third, for those who know the album's title, Grand Guignol, the tone for the rest of the film is set. 


In case you're in the majority of the people who don't know, the Grand Guignol is a style of French theater known for outrageous violence and cruelty.  The theatre included simulated acts of torture, murder, and execution, all of which are featured prominently in Funny Games.  In other words, the opening sequence is a musical scherzo, a joke, that sets the tone for the rest of the film.  It is also, quite likely, over most film-goers' heads, thus becoming the director's private joke.  And that, unfortunately, is the dominant feature of the entire film.  Funny Games is overly smart, overly cruel, and intentionally obscure, intentionally alienating the audience with a series of experimental tricks.  All Haneke's choices are brilliantly done, especially the extraordinary Michael Pitt, the most haunting and creepy villain I've seen on screen in years.  What a shame Haneke didn't give Pitt a true character; fleshing out the script and giving Pitt at least a semblance of background, motivation, and vulnerability would have saved this film.  Instead, Pitt is stuck with a one-dimensional cardboard character, and the young actor's talent is wasted.

And again, I return to my original question:  why was this film mad?  The answer, it seems to me, is for the director's own pleasure and entertainment, thus lowering this project with such great potential into an experimental mess--the director's cinematic masturbation.

Fear What Lurks in the Shadows: Paranormal Activity

Fear What Lurks in the Shadows: Paranormal Activity
by David J. LeMaster

My biggest pet peeve about Hollywood is multi-million dollar computer-graphic effects. Nothing ruins a good scary movie faster than the lengthy cut to a computerized demon, laughably fixed in front of a blue screen, drooling, or growling, or killing, or maiming, or whatever the cookie-cutter villain does that so terrifies its victims. Such shots dominate modern horror and its subgenre, the ax-murderer/slasher movie, and quite frankly, I'm sick of it. Give me psychological thrills over visual graphics any time.

Paranormal Activity, therefore, is what movies should be about for me: good acting, good editing, hellacious psychological scares, and good, clean fun.

Director Oren Peli's film is far from perfect; the conceit becomes somewhat difficult to watch at times, the film is a little slow at the beginning, and the handheld camera makes the audience dizzy at best, and queasy at worst. I'd never gotten dizzy in a film before, not even in Blair Witch, a film easily compared (but far inferior) to this one, but had to move to the very back of the theater to keep from getting sick. Nevertheless, the film's strengths and energy far outweigh the few imperfections, and Paranormal Activity goes down as the year's most pleasant surprise.

Katie Featherston as Katie carries the film with a believable, stirring performance. Her banter with Micah Sloan, sometimes scripted, sometimes improvised, retains an element of truth difficult to achieve in any genre, much less in the often melodramatic turns of horror. Featherston's character evolves through the film as her hope for resolution dims and her sense of humor leaks away, replaced by an overwhelming alarm. The audience willingly takes the trip with her, enveloped in the mystery which is made all the more effective by Peli's decision to keep his villain psychological, a thing of our imaginations. As a result, we join Featherston in imagining the sheer horror of the thing lurking in the dark.

Micah Sloan provides the perfect foil for Featherston, and much of the film's humor (and yes, a horror film can be quite humorous, even without the canned one-liners and generic retread jokes). Got a problem with a spirit lurking in your house? Sloan's answer--buy a camera and try to make the spirit show up more often. Is the spirit turning angry? Sloan's answer--buy a Ouija board and open up the metaphysical doors! The relationship between the two is fresh and amusing--and, surprisingly, very real.

Mark Fredrichs as the psychic provides subtle exposition in the film's first twenty minutes as well as much-needed comic relief in the buildup to the catastrophe. Ashley Palmer's character is not fleshed out, and the actress delivers a forgettable performance. But that's the only thing forgettable about Paranormal Activity.

The film's greatest achievement is its building a sense of suspense. Featherston and Sloan sleep with the bedroom door open and a video camera pointed toward them that gives us a view of the bedroom and hallway and what lurks beyond. With each passing night the audience's sense of anticipation grows as we seek out a movement in the shadows. This is imminently effective in creating a dramatic irony and tension. By the ending (which I didn't like quite as much as the rest of the film, partially because I lost a sense of the unknown) the audience is ready to scream even at the mere passing of shadows on the floor.

So. . . is it an Oscar winner? Probably not. Is it the most horrifying film in years? I'm not the right person to ask--I'm horrified by war films (Platoon, Saving Private Ryan), and find myself laughing and having great fun in a suspense/horror film like this one (I laughed uproariously throughout, especially in the last reel). Am I crazy? Naw. I just enjoy laughing through a good scare. And Paranormal Activity is a great one.

The professor grades the movie:

Acting: A-
Directing: A
Script: B
Special Effects: NA
Entertainment Value: A-
Miscellaneous: B+

Final Grade: A-

Recap: A psychological thriller that keeps the audience guessing and builds a wonderful sense of suspense.