THE YEAR MICHAEL HANEKE SAW DOUBLE: Remaking His Controversial 1997 Meta Psychological Thriller 'Funny Games' for American Audiences A Decade Later
I Have a Sneaking Suspicion This Is the Director's Idea of a "Funny Game".
Austrian (1997), American (2007) - R - Thriller
The year is 2007.
Facebook is everywhere. Your ex is “poking” you.
You wear long-sleeve shirts under short-sleeve shirts and think that looks good. Seth Cohen, etc.
Juvenile comedies with heart are going gangbusters. Small stories are prioritized and for the moment unthreatened.
No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood hammer stakes in the ground as the modern American standards. Need I say more? 2007 is generally considered, in retrospect, a high point in early 21st century popular film.
And so the medium and some of its most fervent believers were ripe for critique.
Enter Austrian Writer-Director Michael Haneke, with a point to make, and the resources to make it. For the second time.
Funny Games is a philosophical conversation and exercise played out between filmmaker and audience using the Psychological Thriller as its structure. Two young men go from politely intruding to not-so-politely intruding on an upper class family, who have just arrived at their vacation home. What begins seemingly innocently ends as planned but unfocused physically and emotionally penetrative pain. It’s called Funny Games. You will not be laughing.
He made this film two times; first for his home Austrian audience in 1997, and later for Americans in 2007.
You might think that because Haneke is from Austria, and the first version to premiere was the Austrian version, that was his plan all along, but you’d be wrong.
He wanted to make the American version, but practicality, with all her strength, forced his hand and he set it at home.
10 years later, when it came time to make the American version, he used the exact same sets, a lot of the same set decoration, and nearly all of the same shot setups.
Why didn’t he differentiate more? Had he learned no new tricks? Was he so confident in the way he presented the story, it could only hurt to deviate? The discourse on violence and its effect on radically rebellious teens can be found anywhere on earth sporting a healthy art scene, but surely that issue takes different shapes depending on the location, and so why not use that to explore Austria and America distinctly?
I don’t have the answers to these questions, I’m sorry, but I did notice subtle, blink-and-you-miss it differences between the films, and I’d like to point them out and draw some conclusions.
Three Differences
In the Austrian original, Paul turns and winks at the audience, breaking the fourth wall for the first time. In the American remake, Paul just smirks.
In both films, Anna is asked to strip, and then put her clothes back on. Her body is not shown on screen as she does this. This is a point about exploiting nudity/bodies, even in a disturbing context such as a home invasion, rather than in an act of pleasure. I noted in the Austrian original, Anna is wearing not unflattering but not particularly nice clothing when she strips, nor is the lighting encouraging. I bring this up only to note that despite both versions making the same scene to make the same point the same way, the American version (starring Naomi Watts) later deviates. It shows the audience Anna in her underwear in a way that seems purposefully or at least obviously flattering and, in the context of the scene and the greater point, incongruously gratuitous.
Neither actor in the American version portraying the parents is American. I have nothing to say about that, it’s just kind of fun trivia.
What to Make of This
Smirk, No Wink? Or Smirk, Wink?
It’s interesting to remember Haneke wanted to make the American first, but couldn’t, and so went with Austria. How far did he get in his planning; his casting? Despite being Austrian, did he have table reads in America and got used to that rhythm and timbre of speech, and the Austrian felt like a translation? Or was it the other way around? When a film gets a shot-for-shot remake, the big differences are sharply contrasted. The wink to break the fourth wall in the Austrian original is iconic. I see it consistently featured on all Funny Games-related media. The American — it’s a turn-and-smirk that, in comparison to the Austrian, barely registers. Does that mean it was a choice completely up to the actor? Did Haneke consider the original wink to be totally superfluous?
I fall on the side of the director controlling so much detail in every other way, he was fine to let the actors make their choices so long as it accomplished its goal (breaking the fourth wall).
Incidental Titillation or Not?
I’m open to the idea that based on whatever my personal sensibilities are, maybe I have a bias for finding Naomi Watts attractive and therefore I was prepared to see the scene as more titillating (titillating at all, actually), than the original despite its brutal context.
But I didn’t want to believe that and so I did the slightest of work, and found the trailer for the American version.
And I noticed something.
Throughout the trailer, as the plot flashes, they throw descriptors up on the screen like “WICKED” and “DANGEROUS”.
One of them is “SENSUAL” and it comes right after a half-second shot of Naomi Watts taking off an article of clothing.
I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, so I looked for the Austrian trailer, and sure enough, no descriptors. Certainly no semi-seductive shots of any actor in the film, followed by a sexually suggestive word. It is notably different. There are longer clips, and no pop-classical music choices, just the two pieces used within the film.
Is this Haneke judging Americans? Is it a country thing? Does he think they can’t handle longer shots? That they need quick shots to hold interest? Does he think they’re sex-crazed despite also being famously puritannical? Was 2007 the right time to head back to the American version because — although school shootings and mass killers were no strange concept to the world in 1997, by 2007 America specifically had earned an unfortunate reputation as the country most associated with school shootings?
Or is the country switch totally incidental, and Haneke is instead more focused on judging how audiences as a whole have changed over time, and America and Hollywood just currently provide the widest reach for his commentary?
Wrap It Up
Haneke doesn’t state, he implies. And with this double vision he makes us see compounding implications about the nature of how different countries and different generations digest and engage with exploitative media.
I have a sneaking suspicion this is his idea of a “funny game”.
Austrian (1997), American (2007) - R - Thriller