Funny Games Reflection PDF

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Summary

Michael Pfremmer...

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Funny Games, directed by Michael Haneke is a movie about a wealthy family-George (husband), Anna (wife), and Georgie (son)- who go to their vacation home & soon find themselves being held hostage by two young men (Paul & Peter). The two crooks play “Funny Games” (or sadistic games) with the family while threatening them with death if they don’t participate. For example, there’s a scene when Paul asks the family to make a bet. He states that the family will bet they’ll be alive at 9:00 am and Paul & Peter bet they will be dead at this time. Noone in George’s family agrees to this bet so Paul looks at the camera and asks the audience: “What do you think? You think they stand a chance? You’re on their side, aren’t you? Who are you betting on?” This scene also is an example of the “fourth wall” being broken when Paul directly talks to the audience. This breaks the fictionality of the film because it reminds the audience we’re watching a storyline that’s completely up to the director. It could be the director playing a “funny game” with the audience, because he’s aware of the fact we want the family to live, but says he’ll kill them anyways. The purpose behind “Funny games” is to bring awareness that the media constantly discusses violence and how society is potentially becoming desensitised to it. All the horrific violence in the film supports this, but, specifically a scene that stood out to me in relation to this idea was the remote control rewind scene. Anna shoots Peter dead but then Paul simply picks up the remote, rewinds time until Peter is alive, and then Paul shoots George instead. The manipulation of time again breaks the fictionality of the film, but it also toys with the audience’s feelings towards the characters/violence. We finally feel relief when seeing Peter dead, but it’s taken right back from us and instead one of our “team members” dies. This scene is an example of how we feel suffering similar to that of the characters, but in mainstream media we simply see a number of deaths (i.e. 20 people dead from school shooting), but we don’t see dead bodies, blood, etc. which has desensitised us to violence....