Funny Games U.S. | DVD Review

When a family (Tim Roth (The incredible Hulk), Naomi Watts (The Ring), and Devon Gearhart (2008’s Changeling)) arrives at their lakeside vacation home for a few weeks of R & R, they are almost immediately set upon by two strange young men dressed all in white whose sole purpose seems to be to terrorize the family to no end. In fact, they want to play a game with their victims and make a bet with them that they will not be alive by 9AM the next morning. What ensues in Funny Games is a couple of hours of the most intense and disturbing cinema seen in quite some time.

The idea of a director remaking one of his own films almost shot-for-shot and word-for-word ten years later seems rather pointless, but Funny Games is an interesting case study. When Michael Haneke (Caché, The Piano Teacher) made the orignal Austrian version back in 1997, his point seems to have been to turn the traditional notion of a suspense thriller, with its standard formula and happy ending, on its head. Having been convinced (and financed) by producers to remake his film for a North American audience, Haneke has delivered the exact same film in English, albeit with more star power and better production values. Yet the most interesting thing happened in the interim between the two versions: the world of film has changed and audiences are more apt to expect the unexpected and the original point of Funny Games has become moot, or more accurately has given way to a more poignant underlying theme. With today’s audiences clamoring for more violent and terrifying films, Funny Games now comes across as more of an indictment of this trend and, more specifically, of the audiences who love these kinds of films. This is especially obvious when Paul (Michael Pitt, Murder By Numbers, LastDays) speaks directly to the camera to tell the audience, as if with a nudge and a wink, that he knows what they want. We’ve now become accomplices to the villains in films.

Haneke, with the help of director of photography Darius Khondji (Se7en, Panic Room) and production designer Kevin Thompson (Michael Clayton, Igby Goes Down), makes excellent use of white hues and natural lighting (everything in this film seems to be WHITE!), and Funny Games features excellent performances from the entire cast, including relative newcomer Brady Corbet (Thirteen) as Paul’s apprentice Peter. Equally remarkable is how effective the minimal use of music (some classical stuff at the beginning as the family is driving and one particularly jarring John Zorn song used a couple of times in the film) is in helping to create the tension and suspense of Funny Games.

With the sharp focus on whites and the lovely setting of a lake in the country, Funny Games is a feast for the eyes and it transfers well to the small screen, especially in the widescreen version (both wide- and full-screen versions are included on this disc). The sound, especially considering the almost non-existent musical soundtrack, is also very sharp and plays well on a 5.1 Surround system. With most of the violence occuring offscreen, often in other rooms, it’s no easy task to realistically depict the sounds of such violence, but the sound department did an excellent job here.

As far as special features go, there’s not a single one on either side of the two-sided disc. It’s a shame, really, as more insight into Haneke’s thought process and motives for making the film would make for a truly interesting featurette, to say the least.

While Haneke may not have attained his indirect goal of making the viewer feel guilty for having seen the film, he does succeed in provoking some thought as to why some of us enjoy violent and disturbing films. What’s odd, though, is that he also succeeds in polarizing the audience and enforcing their views: those who despise the genre will despise it more and those who love the genre will love it more after seeing Funny Games. And that, regardless of which side of that fence you sit on, is the mark of a very good film.

Movie rating – 3.5

Disc Rating – 3