Quote:
Originally Posted by Staal
I stumbled upon Funny Games U.S. last night and really liked this one. I found it terrifying.
But the ending, does anyone know what the hell that was about? That whole rewind part. For me, that ruined the whole movie.
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I don't mean to be a douche or sound elitist or anything, but I think you lost the point of the film.
Funny Games is supposed to be an analysis of the portrayal of violence in cinema, and wake-up call of sorts. Ostensibly Haneke was disturbed by the fact that violence is consumed so easily, for the most part. Such a big deal is made over sexuality represented in films; as a media-consuming collective, we're shocked and offended by nudity or sex scenes or sexual dialogue and/or so on, yet think nothing of a man being shot to death or a car accident or a fist fight, etc. So to really make this observation digestible (and to show us that we're always accomplices to depicted violence by the sheer act of watching it), he decided to implement the viewer in the crimes onscreen. This is why the criminals interact with the viewer, to make us part of what they're doing to this family. The two criminals are not characters in the narrative sense, they're more archetypes, representations of violence itself. They talk to us, they manipulate time and space, they do what they want, removed from not only the rules that govern our society but from reality itself (refer to the conversation Peter and Paul have on the boat at the end of the film).
Funny Games is a meta-film, an abstraction of violence in cinema from cinema itself in order to make a statement about the former by making it the focal point and removing all other extraneous information. By doing this and removing all believability from the film, the violence becomes hollow, meaningless, and we're left to only consider the violent acts themselves, instead of why they might be committed in the context of the film. There's not supposed to be hope for the family. Haneke just wants us to realize the frightening power of violence, and to never take it for granted.
Yes, it's cynical, it's sarcastic, it's manipulative, and sure, it's even a little pretentious, but (I felt, at least) it's effective.
If you couldn't tell, I'm really really bored.