| this week's Tribune review : FUNNY GAMES U.S. [8/10] |
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| Sunday, 30 March 2008 | |
 Funny Games U.S. US/UK/Fr/Austria 2007 Starring : Naomi Watts, Michael Pitt Director : Michael Haneke ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ AUSTRIAN writer-director Haneke has been making films since the seventies, gradually establishing himself as one of Europe's most provocative and intelligent cinematic voices. International recognition for his powerfully intense, psychologically probing dramas gained pace with Funny Games (1997) and The Piano Teacher (2001), then reached new levels with major arthouse hit Caché (2005, aka Hidden.) In the wake of that picture's award-laden success, Paris-based Haneke surprised many by "going Hollywood" - he formed an unlikely alliance with Warner Brothers to remake Funny Games as Funny Games U.S., complete with an actual 'movie star' in the lead role: executive-producer Watts. She plays Anne, who arrives with her husband George (Tim Roth) and young son Georgie (Devon Gearhart) for a weekend at the family's lakeside retreat in upstate, upscale New York. They're soon visited by a pair of politely-spoken men in their twenties, who introducing themselves as Paul (Pitt) and Peter (Brady Corbet) and claim to be on errand for Anne and George's lakefront neighbours. It isn't long, however, before the lads' true natures - and their violently sadistic, criminally amoral intentions - are revealed Some audiences may recall George Sluizer recycling his 1988 Dutch masterpiece Spoorloos into limp stateside retread The Vanishing - but Haneke, notable for his consistency and rejection of compromise, predictably (and thankfully) avoids such a mis-step. A closer precedent, indeed, is Gus Van Sant's (ludicrously underrated) shot-for-shot Psycho homage/re-do - but while Funny Games U.S. is ostentatiously precise in its replication of Haneke's own original, certain key details are necessarily altered: the English language, the new cast, and, most crucially, the American setting. These changes provide very different context and implications - as do, indeed, the very different state of world politics (and world cinema) a decade on. On balance, the results may not be quite as suffocatingly claustrophobic this time round - perhaps because we're that much more distracted by pondering Haneke's intentions. But even those totally familiar with the 1997 version may well find themselves, once again, sweaty-palmed with tension as this ferociously tough - and very darkly comic - exercise in manipulation relentlessly unfolds. Neil Young 25th March, 2008 written for the next issue of Tribune magazine  FUNNY GAMES U.S. : [8/10] : aka Funny Games : US (/UK/Fr/Aut) 07 : Michael HANEKE :111m (BBFC) seen at Pictureville Cinema, National Media Museum, Bradford : 12th March 2008 : public show (complimentary ticket) : Bradford International Film Festival more reviews from Bradford IFF 2008 |
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