SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot.
Michael Haneke on ‘Funny Games U.S.’
Do you think that cinema, and particularly attitudes to violence in cinema, have changed over the ten years since the first Funny Games film?
Nothing has changed. The media have continued to get worse and worse. If anything the film has become even more relevant today than it was ten years ago, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do such an exact remake. There has been a huge increase in the tendency to use violence on a daily basis as a sort of consumer product.
What is the main distinction between the two versions of the film?
It’s hard to say – and in any case I’m always very cagey about passing judgement on my own films. Of course the casts come from very different backgrounds: the whole style of performance in German-speaking films is much more artificial, more theatrical and less naturalistic than in America. Then each actor brings his or her own interpretation to a role. It’s the same in theatre when you put on the same play, the result changes every time, even if the production concept is identical.
Did the actors study your original version in order to prepare for the film? And did they feel themselves placed under pressure by the existence of this blueprint?
They all watched it once because they wanted to know what they were dealing with. But I advised them not to go back to it in case they got the idea that they had to copy it or to do something that would contrast with it. Both would he undesirable because I wanted them to approach the roles on their own terms.
You have a fearsome reputation with actors: for instance, Brady Corbet, who plays one of the thugs, has described you as a ‘total dictator’. Would you agree?
The actors were obviously used to trying out a range of things together in rehearsal. But when I make a film, even when I’m doing something for the first time I know precisely how I would like to have it, which can be annoying for some people. At rehearsals I can say: ‘The coffee is over here and the knife is lying next to it’ – technical things like that. But the script tells you everything you need to know, and we didn’t discuss it. Naomi Watts thought at first that I was like that because we were doing a remake, but once she understood, there was no problem. If the actor is cast correctly then he or she just needs to respond to the situation and that should work fine. When it doesn’t, I say so.
You’ve worked in France, but this is the first time you’ve made a film in the United States, for a major studio, and in English. What’s more, Funny Games is sharply critical of Hollywood genre cinema. How did you find the experience?
Bad, very bad. It’s a dreadfully overblown production apparatus with far too many unnecessary people who only work slowly and grudgingly. I had an eight-and-a-half week shooting schedule and only managed with enormous difficulty to finish the film in time when in Austria I could easily have completed it in six weeks. It was an incredibly tough and unwieldy process and it wore me out. I had a certain additional difficulty with the actors because my English is not so good, so it was hard for me to express myself accurately and to understand when they wanted to explain something to me. I tried as much as I could to avoid working through interpreters but it wasn’t possible when I didn’t have the vocabulary.
Another English-language remake of one of your films has been mooted in Hollywood, a version of Hidden with Ron Howard directing. Are you involved in any way?
Only insofar as they’ve taken out an option on the script. They’re transferring the story to America and I’m getting some money for it and that’s as far as it goes. I’d be very wary of taking part in it, though if it does get made people will compare the two films to each other, of course. That really would be quite funny.
Michael Haneke interviewed by Sheila Johnston, Sight and Sound, April 2008
‘Funny Games U.S.’ in the horror genre context
Back in 1997 Haneke compared his ‘parody of a thriller’ with realist works of terror such as John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and the cinema of stylised ultra-violence represented by Peckinpah, Tarantino and Oliver Stone. But the past decade has seen onscreen depictions of rape and violence reach new heights with the emergence of graphic ‘torture porn’ in horror franchises such as Saw and Hostel. Given that Haneke’s script and mise en scène are largely unchanged, it is in casting and performance that his remake might provide a comment on the contemporary cinematic landscape. Certainly, Naomi Watts imbues her incarnation of Ann with a new sensuality that echoes the fetishisation of the female victim so frequent in present-day Hollywood horror; a scene in which she is made to strip for her captors’ amusement is haunted by the spectre of rape in a much more immediate manner.
Tim Roth as George is a much weaker presence than Ulrich Mühe, placing a new spin on the dynamic between husband and wife as George becomes the embodiment of the emasculated American male and Ann edges ever closer to the status of immortal final girl. Brady Corbet as Peter may be an uncanny replica of his predecessor Frank Giering but Michael Pitt transforms Arno Frisch’s wiry devil Paul into a maleficent cherub, a golden vision of all-American innocence gone wrong, significantly clad in the same Converse pumps as his victims.
Catherine Wheatley, Sight and Sound, April 2008
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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