funny games: more than a cheap thrill
Two rich white boys come into your house and won’t leave. What could go wrong?
This is the premise of Michael Haneke’s 2007 horror film Funny Games. Judging by the trailer, I didn’t think I could handle watching until the end. It combines all of the elements that scare me the most. The villains are realistic, not overtly supernatural or implausible, and the objects of their terror are a couple and their young child (any kind of horror involving kids is my worst nightmare).
The film opens with a man, a woman, and their son in the car on the way to their family vacation. Once they arrive at their vacation home, the situation starts to go south when two Peter and Paul, the two villains of the film, show up looking like they’re on summer holiday from their second semester at Cornell.
Peter knocks on the door and asks to borrow some eggs. Then Paul shows up and they continue prolonging their visit. It soon becomes impossible for the family to get them to leave.
It’s all downhill from there. Paul soon turns violent, injuring George with one of his own golf clubs. Ann then discovers that Paul bludgeoned the family dog to death. They continue to torture the family and eventually murder all three of them.
Up until the last five minutes of the movie, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Had I just watched 90 minutes of senseless violence?
But then Peter and Paul have this fascinating conversation — as they are bringing Ann, tied up and gagged, on the family’s boat out into the middle of the lake where they plan to drown her.
Peter is telling Paul about a movie where the main character is trapped in a fictional alternate reality while everyone he cares about is still in real reality. The man can see his family but can’t communicate with them and is essentially stuck in a black hole.
During this conversation, Paul asks, “But isn’t fiction real?
Peter: “Why?”
Paul: “Well, you can see it in the movie, right?”
Peter: “Mm-hm. Of course.”
Paul: “Well then it’s just as real as reality because you can see it, too. Right?”
Peter: “Bullshit.”
Paul: “Why?”
We never get to hear Peter’s answer. It cuts to the boys tying up the boat outside another home and knocking on the door, beginning the next round of their sadistic murder games. Then the closing credits roll.
As I was watching that conversation, I thought back to moments in the film when Paul breaks the fourth wall. There are a couple of times when Paul looks into the camera and speaks directly to the audience. But the most consequential instance of this happens when the two young men are tormenting the couple in the house.
Ann sees a window of opportunity and snatches the rifle from Paul, then turns to Peter and shoots him in the stomach. Paul scrambles to find the remote control for the tv and, in a surrealistic twist, rewinds the scene to the moment just before Ann takes the rifle. He corrects his careless mistake and picks up the gun before Ann can kill Paul. After that scene, we see the rest of the movie play out, including George’s murder followed by Ann’s.
My theory is that Paul is now living in the fictional reality. The point at which this fictional reality departed from real reality was when Ann took the gun and shot Peter. Funny Games is a depiction of Paul’s fictional reality. We’ll never know what really happened to Ann, but I’d like to think she killed Paul too and sent him to the black hole that he’s in.
It wasn’t until after watching the film that I read Haneke’s essay, “Violence and the Media,” and understood how Funny Games is a commentary on the portrayal of violent and graphic imagery in films and television. As someone who is particularly squeamish at seeing blood and gore on screen, I also recognize its utility, both in art and in the news media.
I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to the question of how much violence should be portrayed for public consumption. But good art isn’t meant to give us answers. It’s only meant to ask the question. Funny Games left me with lots of questions — and I’m not mad about it.
