Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997, Austria)
While Funny Games is perhaps not Michael Haneke's best film, it is perhaps his most iconic. Even the iconography of the film - its two young men with their white gloves and short shorts - has somehow entered the consciousness of every cinephile whether they have seen the 1997 film or not. Though attempting to deconstruct the home invasion film, Funny Games somewhat ironically set the template for the genre going forward - one can see its clear influence on more mainstream efforts such as The Strangers, where the violence is seemingly random and the intruders often give the justification that they are doing this solely because they can.
First and foremost, Funny Games is a masterclass in craft. The slow buildup at the beginning of the film is a lesson in how to create tension on screen. We are unsettled from our first introduction to the two young men. Arno Frischer is perhaps the film's most iconic actor - his presence is one of the defining roles of European cinema of the 1990s. But the rest of the cast is in full force, including the mother Anna (Susanne Lothar), and father Georg (the late Ulrich Muhe, who rose to international prominence before his death with his role in The Lives of Others).
The self-reflexive aspects of Funny Games have perhaps aged the poorest of anything in the film, and it is an unfortunate tendency of Haneke that his more didactic streak tends to get the best of him. Putting these elements aside, Funny Games is a masterpiece that cannot be forgotten once you have seen it. It is a tour de force film from all parties involved and has come to set the standard for brutal and unrelenting horror in the 21st century. Haneke might not be so happy about this.
9/10
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