Funny Games
One film I saw today was Funny Games (1997) by Michael Haneke. For a while now the U.S. version has been in my watchlist and I've been told, that version although only being a shot for shot remake was superior, but with most movies I usually like to see the director's original vision of a film before viewing any remakes, and for this one in particular, I thought it was absolutely incredible, and basically met up wiith all my expectations. I've been aware of Haneke and his notoriety as a creative for a while now, and he's a director that I would consider my most anticipated right now, as someone with a bunch of his movies in my watchlist. He's someone with a certain edge around him that just draws you in, and makes want to learn more about him, and I'm so glad I finally got around to checking out one of his movies.
This movie if filled to the brim with quality, so much of the film was so expertly crafted and planned out, the acting is so impactful, and emotionally powerful, the soundtrack while extremely minimal is heavy hitting and full of weight when used, the editing is super fluid, and satisfying to view, the framing and direction of shots, are so fun to observe and analyze, that I found myself really appreciating the care that he took to even bother compositeing correctly. So many film treat shot composition as an after thought an thus the end product becomes disengaging and boring, blending in with any other movie you could watch. I just finished the Mission Impossible series so this was an incredible breath of fresh air. A lot of the sequences of events are similarly satisfying to view unfold, I luckily had context before viewing the film so I never felt it as jarring as most people might've interpreted as. I know that when the remake came out, most American audiences were pissed off at the depiction of violence and how certain events were presented, which I'll get into later when I watch the U.S. version, but for me this movie did it the right way. It's tasteful but it makes sure not to hide away from the disturbing reality of how this could happen to anyone in real life, but it's also brutal in a way that's not exploitative and lazily overly grotesque. It's all done in good quantities and I respect the hell out of Haneke for knowing when to pull back and when to go all in.
I did have a couple minor problems with this film, for one while the acting from most of the cast was great. They're were little moments of dialogue that kinda felt a little stilted. That mostly has to do with the language barrier, so I can look past it, but something I can't look past is the child acting. The child actor in this movie is not as good as I'd hope for, and to be fair, even if you asked a grown adult to act with any of the actors in this movie they'll probably also look subpar in comparison, but I can't get over how held back the child looks and feels in so many scenes. He's not terrible, he has some pretty good scenes every now and then, but when It came to the more dramatic and tense scene it never felt believable. The only other problem I guess I have is that I really don't like the ending shot, it lingers for way too long, and it comes off comical, in a movie that is so stylistically well done.
All in all I and a great time, this isn't soemthing most people will get, or even remotely enjoy, but I found myself absolutely entranced in the story, incredible film from Haneke. I can't wait to dive deeper into his filmography.
8/10