Movie Notes: Let's Play the Dangerous 'Funny Games' (2007)

"Funny Games" is not about satisfying our appetite for violence, but about forcing us to examine it. This is a film that holds up a mirror to our darker impulses, and what we see might make us squirm.

The setup is deceptively simple: A well-to-do family - Ann (Naomi Watts), George (Tim Roth), and their young son Georgie (Devon Gearheart) - retreat to their lake house for what should be an idyllic vacation. Enter two young men in tennis whites, Paul (Michael Pitt) and Peter (Brady Corbert), who arrive asking to borrow eggs and proceed to take the family hostage. What follows is an exercise in calculated cruelty that's all the more disturbing for its restraint.

Director Michael Haneke isn't interested in the usual thriller mechanics. Instead, he's crafting a meditation on violence in cinema and our complicity as viewers. Paul occasionally breaks the fourth wall, shooting knowing smirks at the camera as if to say, "This is what you came for, isn't it?" These moments aren't merely clever meta-commentary; they're indictments.

The film's power lies not in what it shows - indeed, most of the violence occurs offscreen - but in what it makes us confront about ourselves. Why do we watch these films? What do we hope to see? Haneke denies us the cathartic release we've come to expect from the thriller genre, and that denial is precisely the point.

Those seeking conventional thrills will leave disappointed. "Funny Games" is not interested in entertaining us so much as interrogating us. It's a film that refuses to let its audience off the hook, and therein lies both its brilliance and its challenge. Like Paul's unsettling smirk, it knows exactly what it's doing, and it wants us to know too.

Note: I give "Funny Games" three stars, not because it fails at what it sets out to do, but because its success comes at the cost of alienating its audience - which may well be exactly what Haneke intended.