Funny Games: A Meditation on Film Violence

I've always despised the conventional; partly because of its excess. I also feel the road to the end and the outcome is separate and unrelated. I want to watch something that's going to taunt me and haunt me; something that's going to dangle a big juicy steak just out of reach and lure me to a place where I am force-fed cabbage. As a viewer I like to be messed with. I like to be provoked.

If nothing else, Funny Games provokes. It seems to be as sadistic as its villains, manipulating and toying with the viewer in the same way its villains play with their victims. The director doesn't just want to involve the viewer. He wants us to be an accomplice, to handcuff us to the villains and point a guilty finger in our direction. "You can stop this," the director seemingly taunts, "just get up and leave and it will all be over." It’s this kind of game play that sets the film's tone. By making us accomplices he shows us the impact the viewer has on film violence and its overall acceptability in today's society.

The two villains aren't real and the director doesn't want us to think they are. They are nothing more than placeholders, artifacts detailing our society's penchant for blood. They go by various familiar names; Peter and Paul, Tom and Jerry and Beavis and Butthead; the latter two duos referencing media violence and its effect. The scariest thing about these two white-glove-wearing sadists is their seemingly optimistic and thoroughly consistent manners. After mutilating the father's leg with his own golf club, the two splint it and repeatedly ask what they can do to help. They then help carry him into the living room and then kindly introduce themselves. Their manners and kindness come across emotionless however. They say please and thank you with mechanical flatness and detachment.

Manners, it seems now days, have become robotic; almost as if its part of our default setting. We say 'how are you,' just to say it most the time and hardly wait or care for a response. The violence in the film plays the same way. The two villains show no emotional range and carry out the murders on the same wavelength they shake hands. The director is screaming out for us to understand the effect of film and TV violence and the way it slowly desensitizes and neutralizes the viewer. During the famous remote scene, where the mother of the family steals the shotgun and blows a hole through one of the villains, it’s easy to cheer her on. In fact I've never felt more deflated and let down then when the friend of the villain grabs the remote and rewinds it back to before his friend was shot. Oddly enough, the violence performed by the villains is always performed off screen. But the bloodiest, most violent and brutal death is the one the director gets the viewer to cheer for; all because he gets you to feel that it's warranted. Similarly, when we see Jack Bauer kill 40 terrorists in one episode of 24 we also feel (or tell ourselves) that its warranted; bad people deserve to die. Director Michael Haneke disagrees. He argues that violence is violence and shouldn't be justified by a bad-guy-meter scale. As he involves the viewer, Hanake shows us just what a slippery slope film violence can be. Our society's endless crave for violence and mayhem can be seen on the TV guide schedule. In addition we go to films like Saw 4 and eat popcorn to perverse and torturous brutality; all the while justifying our intent.

Funny Games provokes. It just doesn’t ask questions but begs for answers. It's consistently shifting as well, seemingly disguising it's self as good guy/bad guy showdown. But that is not what it is. Funny Games is an indictment; it’s a call to repentance and better yet a giant mirror showing all of us what we've become.


*Haneke has directed an American version due out in March of this year. It's shot for shot and stars the great Tim Roth and Naomi Watts.

No Country For Old Men

This film took days to digest. I still feel it rumbling in my gut like 3-day-old meatloaf. My dreams have had equal effect. In my dreams Anton Chigurh stands over me with a half-smile, waiting for me to wake up. He's eager to flip his coin. He's eager to bestow my fate.

I imagine Chigurh as the go-to guy for the devil. Not just any ordinary henchman but the one Satan knows will get the job done. You can just see Satan in frustration of the futile efforts of his demons. "What do you mean its not done," he says, "Get me Anton Chigurh dammit!"

The silver screen has had many villains; each trying to lure viewers to deem them the worst. It seems each effort of creating the master villain falls short on some aspect. Too scary, not scary enough. But Anton Chigurh is enough. He is evil personified. He is what Thomas Harris hoped Hannibal Lecter would be. The problem with lector is not a question of evil. It's actually the opposite. Harris makes Lecter angelic, makes him a divine being. He's all-knowing and all-seeing. Lecter is more god-like than devilish. He's far too sophisticated for the likes of Anton Chigurh or the devil for that matter. Lecter, with his elegant tastes and refineness would pity Chigurh, not admire. His real only fault is craving human flesh. And Lecter would never kill nor eat Clarice Starling. Such a thing would be below him, something a heathen would do.

Devil's Rejects' Otis Driftwood kills people as easily and naturally as Chigurh. But Otis prefers to take his time. He gets off on it. He likes to slow things down and court the victim in his own sadistic way. He likes to peel off their faces and grope and molest the victim with the barrel of a loaded gun. Driftwood is crazy. And he's easy to diagnose. He's your garden variety psychopath with a thirst for blood and a history that makes his actions explainable. But most importantly, he's human. In fact it's his humanity that scares you the most. He and his family sit down for Sunday dinners and stop at the corner drug store for ice cream. They're sick, ruthless Americans who consume, watch classic sit-com re-runs and lock cheerleaders in chicken pens. Decisions to kill and eat banana oatmeal for breakfast are made on the same wavelength. It's who they are.

I think the main difference between Chigurh, Driftwood and Lecter is restraint. Lecter is a sophisticated being who prides himself in his ability to resist. He would rather savor the flavor of the perfect moment than to indulge without restraint. Driftwood kills for pleasure and pleasure alone. But he couldn't just shoot and leave. His pleasure comes from watching the victim watch him as he slowly mutilates and gropes them. He restrains himself from premature killings and keeps victims for months before being completely satisfied.

Chigurh is death and waits for no one. He reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator film. He's mechanical and cold and doesn't yeild to begging and reason. As a symbol of death, Chigurh isn't just killing but delivering fate. His victims fates have more to do with their own choices than his. Chigurh's coin flipping quirk show's us his logic. Call it luck or chance or fate. If it lands on the side you didn't call then not only are you going to die, but you are supposed to die. Their choices did this, not his. And I'm not talking about the choice to call heads or tails. But every choice the person has made in their life up to their final one. Whether this logic makes any sense doesn't matter. It makes sense to Chigurh. It didn't make sense to Carla Jean Moss. Llewelyn's country bumpkin wife couldn't understand it. She admits to Chigurh of not having anything to live for, but doesn't think that her husband’s stupidity should seal her fate. Earlier in the film, bounty hunter Carson Wells describes Chigurh as a man of strange principles. It's these principles that force Chigurh's hand. He promised Llewelyn that he would kill his wife if Llewelyn didn't comply with Chigurh's demands. So even after Llewelyn is dead, Chigurh, being a man of principle, keeps his promise. But unfortunately for Carla Jean, Llewelyn's selfish pride and stupidity did seal her fate. Sometimes our decisions affect more than ourselves. Sometimes stupidity gets us killed. Sometimes it gets family members and innocent people killed. Sometimes both. During that final moment, when Chigurh pulls out his coin and demands Carla Jean to call it, you know she's not going to win. Even if she called tails 100 times, it would still, 100 times come up heads. So is it fate that Chigurh represents or consequence of choice?

Llewelyn Moss is anyone of us. His greed, courage, creativity and stupidity shows what all of us are capable of. He, at times, seems to be smarter than Chigurh. He seems to be the perfect match for Chigurh. He seems to be able to, at times, outwit fate. His cunning and inventiveness makes for some thrilling moments. Moss is renegade and cutthroat and we love it. But he gets killed. He lets his guard down and suffers the penalties for it. But it isn't his fate to die. Chigurh doesn't kill him. Moss shares some beer with a bored, horny stranger and lets his guard down. He, after intense, well-planned-out, carefully calculated actions, seemingly ripe without error chooses to have a beer with a total stranger; an absolute contradiction to everything he'd done up to that point. Moss's fate is the consequence of his choices. So, in effect, Chigurh did kill him.

I think it stands to reason, in a story full of shady and deceiving characters that one acts as a beacon. Tommy Lee Jones is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Bell doesn't ever meet Chigurh or find Moss; in fact his close-call encounters with both don't really have any relevance to the plot. But his words do. Bell's a straight-shooting, salt-of-the-earth kind of guy. His narration gives the story context and depth. Bell sort of putters around the Texas landscape looking for Moss with an ongoing thought that acts as a theme throughout the film. 'What the hell has happened?' Bell thinks back to when his father was a sheriff, "didn't even carry a gun," he tells us. He's disgusted at the way things are going. After investigating Llewelyn's death Bell has coffee with a fellow big city sheriff. "It's the dismal tide," the sheriff tells Bell as the two talk about the evil in the world. The dismal tide. What a statement. Evil does seem to slither and slide into the conscious mind. It certainly doesn't appear all at once. Evil creeps and crawls into our lives. It blends in and adapts to its surroundings. As years go by things certainly progressively get worse in the world. Evil is on the rise. But it doesn't happen all at once. It's the dismal tide.

The Buzz on Hot Fuzz

For those into film, I mean really into film. Like the ones who know the significance of the 1992 Sundance film festival, the importance of Pauline Kael's work and the inspiration behind the opening scene in Robert Altman's "The Player" will understand and appreciate Hot Fuzz for what is truly is. For me, Its changed the way I look at film. My 15 years of serious film viewing is now divided into two basic time periods. Before Hot Fuzz (BHF) and After Hot Fuzz (AHF). The AHF is the new era of film watching, for my eyes have been opened. Its my equivalent of the french new wave for cinephiles in the 60's. However, I can't expect movie gentiles to understand.

Most will pan it as a buddy cop comedy. Some will cite it has a who-done-it horror. And many will lump it off as simply being English high-brow pulp. Nowadays, film previews edit the life out of films. They steal away the film's soul and market it according to the ideal demographic. Take Judd Apatow's latest crude and rude meditation on male misanthropes, "Knocked Up." Previews beat out the meat and air-up the fluff. Its packaged like a harmless chick flick, but anyone who's seen it knows its nothing of the like. "Hot Fuzz" is also a victim of the soul-stealing, plot twisting manipulations of main stream film trailers. The previews display it with Reno-911-like buffoonery and muck it up as slapstick. Hot Fuzz is not slapstick. Hot Fuzz is groundbreaking.

Hot Fuzz follows the trail blazing effort of its director’s debut film, “Shaun of the Dead” by, again, creating a new genre. “Shaun of the Dead,” a parody of 70's zombie films also adds to and furthers the zombie genre. It laughs-at and applauds in the same breath. Its both pointing a joking finger and offering a warm congratulatory handshake. It is the parody tribute.

Director Edgar Wright handles this new hybrid genre with love and adoration. Its like he's saying, “Yeah, those films are good, but they could be better and here’s how. Oh yes, and here is also what is lacking.” Wright isn’t the next Mel Brooks and certainly wouldn’t make one of those awful Date Movie/ Epic Movie spoofs. In a lot of ways he’s a film pioneer. His two films that are responsible for this new genre are so terribly refined and so masterly edited that they in no way feel like mock-ups or tear-downs. And even though they target certain cliches and genres, they feel new and fresh.

Hot Fuzz, like Shaun of the Dead is ‘parody-tributing’ a particular genre: the buddy cop action flick. Another uncanny element to Wrights masterful film making is his subtle/in-your-face humor. Wright knows that most viewers who watch his films are already going to know all about the films he’s parody-tributing; so telling the viewer the exact films he’s commenting on would be cheap and unneeded, right. Wrong. Wright tells us the exact films he’s parody-tributing. And, he tells us with excess, so much so, that he even shows clips from the very scenes he’s going to later reinvent. Now that’s balls. The whole charade plays as a silly/serious gag and runs as an underlying theme to the film. The idea is that movie cops, and all the impossible situations they end up in, embed themselves in the fantasies of normal cops. These small city officers tap into their movie-cop-archive to reach their potential. Without the fictional, fake, over-the-top super-police images the real cops would never risk their mortality to achieve super-cop heroic feats. This theme also acts as social commentary to our media-obsessed nation.

Hot Fuzz plays out on several levels. Its high-body-count action thrust is balanced by its satirical wit and political cynicism. It’s Rambo meets Monty Python on steroids. Go see it.