Funny Games

Are what Austrian director Michael Haneke likes to play. He's a sick fuck. I like that in a filmmaker. That said, Haneke's work is far from gratuitous. Funny Games is no Saw. His latest, Caché is his most infuriating so far. I like that too. I like being thwarted by a film. I like not knowing what's going on. I like not getting what I want. Maybe I'm a masochist. It helps to be a masochist if you intend to watch Haneke's films.

Yes, Haneke is a sick fuck, but there's method to his sickness. He appears to have a very low opinion of the human race, and he would like to punish it. Why does that make my heart sing? I guess I'm a sick fuck too. All I can say is, after watching one of his films, I want to scream I feel you, dog! I guess that makes me as much a misanthrope as Haneke. I consider Humans are an accursed lot a step up, as a moral position, from Those humans over there are an accursed lot, but we are blessed. The latter view, and not the love of money, is the root of all evil. Haneke chucks in the distinction, sketching nasty portraits of the class - the European bourgeois - most likely to cling to it, and sets about kicking their teeth in. It's fun to watch, but only if you like seeing people who richly deserve and are long overdue for a thrashing receive one. I do.

K. and I went to see Caché last night. Afterward we couldn't stop talking about it. It's never easy getting a handle on allegory (usually because the writer isn't sure what he's trying to say) which is why I tend to avoid it, but as we were hunting for the film's hidden meaning, the "real meaning," which we naturally assumed was political (I blame Hollywood for its infantilizing tendencies, yet I desperately seek refuge in the literal!) I remember saying, "It's so fucked up. He accuses this poor guy whose life he ruined of attacking him. Then he fucks his life up some more and all the while acts like he's the aggrieved party. That is so-" We both sort of looked at each other. "Oh... That's what it's about."

Yeah. THAT.