Funny Games

[jsmalahy]

Well at least someone commented on something I wrote.

LOL. Sorry if that was harsh, but I really hated this film. Smug all over. Though I do think it contains a subtle critcism of our society's "audience acceptance" of torture, in terms of what is going on internationally. Or maybe I was just looking for anything I could like about it?

[Big Magilla]

I admired the audacity of Haneke's original. I got the message. I thought it was a profound, if deeply disturbing, piece of film-making but I can't imagine ever sitting through it again.

Line for line, shot for shot remakes rarely work. In fact, I can't think of one that does. Even the stalwart Prisoner of Zenda that worked (and sitll works) so well in the 1937 version seems forced and univolving in the 1952 remake despite its Grade A cast.

Re-making Funny Games albeit tailored to American sensibilities and habits might work, but placing English speaking actors in an American setting with the same set of issues as in the original I would imagine (not having seen it) only serve to make it more off-putting to the audiences Haneke is trying to speak to.

On the other hand if it had been re-made by an American director it would more likely have been given a different ending (SPOILER ALERT) with the little boy getting the best of the killers.

[rain Bard]

Could someone please explain me why has Haneke chosen to remake this movie?

Good point. It has no reasonable explanation. Same as Gus Van Sant when filmed Psycho. IMO he destroyed the movie. As for Haneke, maybe he was tempted by the american producers. (Money makes the world go around...)

Gus Van Sant didn't, and couldn't, destroy Hitchcock's Psycho. It's still there, the same as it was in 1960, and probably taking up no smaller a percentage of the shelf space at your local video store (if you still have a local video store) than it was before the remake was announced. Of course Van Sant's version cannot be considered a success on the terms that any of Hitchcock's great films are. But I find it to be a success on another level- that of inviting the audience to watch a film differently than they normally watch a new film, or rewatch a film seen before, or even watch a typical remake. There's something eerie about being able to predict, down to nearly the most microscopic level, what you're about to see on the screen, even though it's technically a "new" image. I found it fun, fascinating, and even scary.

There's something of this going on in the not-quite-shot-for-shot Funny Games remake as well (I saw both versions for the first time in the space of little over a week, first at an Ulrich Muehe tribute in San Francisco, then at Sundance), but in this case the original in question is such an unpleasant film to watch that "fun" never enters into the equation. It's hard to imagine the average person wanting to see either Funny Games more than once, or even to watch the other version once they've seen one. (I wouldn't have done it had I not felt like being a lab rat.) There are differences in watching the new version; for me they mostly amounted to being able to watch more of the screen more of the time because I was not relying on subtitles, and feeling differently about the "star" baggage brought to the roles by the actors. Others have found other things about the new version to resonate differently. Here is an interesting take. And here's my own.



Edited By rain Bard on 1206343887

[Hustler]

Could someone please explain me why has Haneke chosen to remake this movie?

Good point. It has no reasonable explanation. Same as Gus Van Sant when filmed Psycho. IMO he destroyed the movie. As for Haneke, maybe he was tempted by the american producers. (Money makes the world go around...)



Edited By Hustler on 1206317344

[Heksagon]

That should be pretty easy.

[dws1982]

So it would reach a wider audience than the original.

[Heksagon]

Could someone please explain me why has Haneke chosen to remake this movie?

[barrybrooks8]

Well at least someone commented on something I wrote.

[jsmalahy]

Early candidate for Worst Movie of the Year.

[barrybrooks8]

I loved it. I haven't seen the original and I've only seen Cache and Piano Teacher as far as Hanake goes. I thought Naomi Watts was at the top of her game and reminiscent of her work in Mulholland Drive after what I consider a couple of disasters (Painted Veil, The Ring Two). Michael Pitt was fantastic as well, and it's always nice to see Siobhan Fallon. I've only seen two official 2008 movies this year, Funny Games, and Cloverfield, and they would have easily made my top twenty, if not ten, for 2007.