Left Field Cinema

Pointless, bizarre, cruel, visceral, tense, relentless, unsympathetic, realistic, powerful, relevant, irrelevant, exploitative. Just some of the words one might use to describe Michael Haneke’s 1997 feature Funny Games. Also just some of the words one might use to describe Michael Haneke’s 2007 film Funny Games U.S., but latterly with significantly different connotations. Its been over ten years since Funny Games was released, a very simple film in terms of plot – a family of three travel to their summer house for a relaxing holiday, whilst there they are terrorized by two young men who then keep them captive and begin to emotionally torture them. At the point Haneke made the film he was already an established talent in Austria and Germany, making television movies and then later completing a lose trilogy in the form of three feature films: The Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video and 71 Fragments of the Chronology of Chance. These three films established a clear style of disjunctive cinema visually and a set of work with a real social relevance, tackling the complex nature of capitalism, the cruelty of man, violence in the media, immigration and news editorialism. These issues would prevail through the rest of Haneke’s work to date, including Code Unknown, Time of the Wolf, The Piano Teacher, and Hidden. After ten years and the intermediate work Haneke has established himself as the one of the most interesting and consistent film makers working today especially with Hidden which completely contorts the modern thriller into something totally unique. So at the peak of his career, with the future to look toward to why would this director take literally six steps back to the film which solidified his reputation? Haneke insists it’s because Funny Games was always an American film that the plot has more relevance in the USA’s culture of gun violence and glamorising murder and mayhem, that it is critical of America and deserves to be presented in the correct environment. The producers tell us it’s to give the film a wider audience, that only a few thousand Americans ever saw the original. The cynic amongst us might argue it’s so that more people will go back and watch the original Funny Games and from there discover the rest of Haneke’s work. Whatever the motives it’s been done now and is worthy of a comparative examination.

Funny Games U.S. is a shot for shot remake of the original. The production crew has gone to great lengths to retain the same look and feel of the locations; the costumes are the same, the proportions of the house which the bulk of the action takes place in is identical. The dialogue and the blocking are identical right down to the originals disturbing breaking of the fourth wall. Cosmetically the distinctions are sparse with the obvious exceptions of the cast and the language. Tiny differences are in place only to adapt the story to a more modern environment, mobile phones replacing the portable house phone, and lines of dialogue tweaked accordingly, at one point the television is turned on and the programming is different but only so much as they are US equivalents of the originals European broadcasts, instead of a VCR we have DVD, little and ultimately irrelevant distinctions which are simply there to keep the narrative grounded in the present.

America has been making remakes of European films for decades, Some Like it Hot for example, City of Angels, The Vanishing; all taken from the other side of the Atlantic. Further a field and Asian cinema is also often plundered for remake potential, most famously The Magnificent Seven remake of Seven Samurai, or the numerous Japanese and Korean horror movies which are particularly in vogue at the moment. But why? What’s the point? Surely if the film is of an excellent standard then there’s no need to remake it? The counter argument is invariably that people don’t enjoy watching films with subtitles, to which my counter argument would be – get over it. To restrict oneself by the language of a film is to effectively deny oneself access to some of the greatest films ever made. But cinema is not just about the art, there are wider financial concerns especially in the English speaking world. Films have to make money and if a film such as Funny Games is a cult hit, a world cinema success story then it’s more than likely that the success can be replicated in the U.S. and what better way to do so than by employing the same director and shooting the film in exactly the same manner? But this then gives us an even more puzzling question, why film it shot for shot? Surely in ten years Haneke has found some room for improvement in his work? Personally as soon as I complete a film I want to change something, and even the most talented and excellent film makers across the globe generally express a want to change various aspects of most of their work, leading to the perfectly appropriate saying that “films aren’t completed, they’re abandoned”. Was Haneke so completely happy with his first version that he saw no need to change a single shot? I doubt it, but let’s say he was, wouldn’t it still be very difficult to resist the urge to experiment? Maybe not. Perhaps Haneke decided upon shot for shot so that through a highly restrictive rule he could maintain complete control over his work in the notoriously intrusive Hollywood system, if it was a condition of his contract that nothing could change then that protects his film, not only that it protects the producers as they know exactly what they’re getting. This is by no means the first time a shot for shot remake has been attempted, Gus Van Sant’s remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is a more famous and critically lampooned example. It was even easier to argue it was a pointless exercise as the original was filmed in English so there was no translation justification for that production to hold on to.

In a recent Sight and Sound review they contended that the film had lost a lot of its impact over the course of ten years with the likes of Saw and Hostel’s depiction of cruel and graphic violence saturating the medium so much so that the original Funny Games seems tame by comparison. Having only seen the original within the past two years means that I’m in no position to discuss if the film was or was not more powerful ten years previous. However I do know that through remarkably well built tension and to a certain extent the films own reputation Funny Games was an emotionally exhausting experience which still keeps you firmly on the edge of your seat upon first viewing. Obviously the experience is some what dampened up repeat viewing insofar as the outcome is now known. But the overall mood still prevails and tension is still there for the experiencing. The same rule applies to Funny Games U.S., if you’ve already seen the original you’ll be surprised out how intense the experience has remained. If you’ve not seen the original you will find the remake just as compelling as a first time view of the original.

Unfortunately if you’ve already seen Funny Games then Funny Games U.S. sometimes plays out like a second cast production of a stage play, it is a truly peculiar experience and largely due to the productions minutiae. It feels like awakening in a parallel universe and there is the possibility of spending most of the first act trying to shake the unusual sensation of seeing the same film – but not.

Examining both films side by side it is tough to say which is superior, but the edge has to go to the original. Without considering the question of why, taking away the points for originality and simply comparing both films on their own merits. It is marginal but Funny Games is still superior to Funny Games U.S. and this is quite simply down to the casting, if the production had chosen to use unknown actors instead of well known stars like Naomi Watts and Tim Roth it might well have been a closer call. But their glamour unfortunately detracts from the film and brings us too close to the understanding that we are watching a movie. Watts in particular looks gorgeous as usual, and when compared to Susanne Lother the difference is clear, both she and Ulrich Muhe are superior in their roles. But it doesn’t stop with the protagonists either, the antagonists are also superior in the original, in Funny Games U.S. the two young men look like they might be brothers, which makes telling them apart just fractionally more difficult than in the original. But here at least the performances are matched, and their unknown quantity is retained. Likewise both actors playing the young child of the family are also equally up to the task, and this is perhaps the only casting point where both films are equally matched. This is where the comparison ends, because it has to, there is nothing more to compare, no other changes in the production are worthy of note.

Haneke has already stated that he found the American film making process too tiresome with too many crew members to do the job. Funny Games U.S. took significantly longer to shoot than Funny Games and from recent interviews it appears he is returning to Europe for his future projects and thankfully his next work isn’t a remake, but entirely original and hopefully he will continue to do so for the rest of his career as Funny Games U.S. was an interesting experiment but not one which needs to be repeated.

M.Dawson