How much therapy did this child actor need after starring in this movie?
An affluent couple and their little boy are held hostage in their summer home, the gates and locks installed to provide security ironically keeping them prisoner. They are terrorized and eventually murdered by a couple of clean-cut looking young men who appear -- at first -- to be quite normal except for the white gloves. Most of the violence takes place off-screen, which somehow makes it more unsettling.
The excellent performances, cinematography, pacing, and starkly believable scenes evoke many feelings. I could sense the powerlessness, shock, and confusion such a situation would create along with the absolute despair of losing a child. Paradoxically, I also felt a sense of detachment from the characters and story, a feeling heightened by the whole "breaking the third wall" thing. One of the perpetrators periodically winks at the audience, asking us if we feel we're getting what we came for. He also berates and toys with his victims for asking the question that was foremost in my mind: "Why? Just why?"
The film deliberately goads viewers for choosing a violent film as "entertainment." At the same time, it mocks our natural human desire to make meaning of such senseless violence, to be offered some reason -- or at least some context -- to help us understand why this is happening. It's as if we're being told, "Hey, you signed up for this, so you've gotta sit back and watch. And don't ask us to make it easier for you in any way, or help you make sense of this madness, because that ain't gonna happen."
Roger Ebert referred to this film as an exercise in learned helplessness -- this is very apt. The story moves relentlessly toward its grim conclusion, and when the tables finally turn -- just for a moment -- the perpetrator gets to rewind the movie. WTF? And the knife we see left on the family's sailboat near the beginning of the movie? I predicted that, like Chekov's famous gun on the mantlepiece, it would come into play. And it did. But it was underwhelming to say the least.
Was that the filmmaker's master move? Stripping away ordinary literary and cinematic conventions, leaving us with nothing but cold, brutal reality? Hell if I know.
I appreciated but didn't enjoy this film. I admired the technical accomplishment and outstanding performances. But honestly I had to force myself to sit through it. It's sadistic, tedious, and way more manipulative than any movie has a right to be. Ebert referred to the film's "insufferable smugness." Yup -- that too.
Ebert described this movie as a "Skinner Box" in which the lab rats -- movie viewers -- are being tested to see how much negative stimuli we can take before doing the sensible thing and walking out. Haneke reportedly said: "Anyone who leaves the cinema doesn't need the film, and anybody who stays does."
What would he say about a viewer who forced herself to sit through the movie? Holy crap -- I don't even wanna know. :-)
I won't dispute Haneke's unique style and tremendous skill, and I'd still like to watch more of his work. But I may have to detox from this for a while first.
