Haneke, Haneke, Haneke and even MORE Haneke

20 December 2009 Liam O'Brien No Comment

This discussion spoils virtually every film by Michael Haneke, so try not to read this unless you have watched his filmography. It’s hard to talk about Haneke’s films because since they are very minimal, everything is a spoiler. And I think we spoiled Irreversible, too.

LIAM: Today we’re going to talk a little bit about Michel Han-eekah, who is not to be confused with Michael Haneke, the acclaimed Austrian filmmaker.

DOM: That joke will be completely lost in text.

LIAM: OK, I’ll explain: We have a joke that “Michel Han-eekah” is Haneke’s protege, they are two completely different people, and that Michel Han-eekah is the guy who remade Funny Games U.S. without asking Haneke for permission. It’s a pretty stupid joke, but you know, you’ve gotta insert some fun into a Haneke discussion, otherwise it’s all tears and fears.

*Glances over Haneke’s Wikipedia page*

DOM: What’s with Haneke and blurred images? *laughs*

LIAM: Actually, the picture on his Wikipedia page has changed a few times. First one I saw was the blurry picture we’re looking at now, then a clearer one, and now it’s reverted back to the original blurred one. We had this theory that the blurred montage of Haneke walking in the Cache documentary was the only surfaced footage of Michel Han-eekah. Anyway.

DOM: What a way to start this discussion.

LIAM: I’ve more or less finished his feature filmography; I haven’t seen any of his TV films like The Castle or The Rebellion. He’s actually made a ton of TV films, but I don’t think a lot of them are available.

DOM: We don’t care about TV, because 1) we’re Projectorheads and 2) TV is a lower artform. Do you hear that, Bown? A LOWER artform… well actually no, do you READ that, Bown? A lower artform. I forgot this was transcribed.

LIAM: We noticed this recently: it’s a subconscious thing, but on the Projectorheads blog and forum we bold films and put TV shows in italics.

DOM: It’s not subconscious, I do it deliberately. I’ve been doing it since the blog started because I always thought that we should bold films, and books and TV should be italics, because you know, books and TV aren’t our focus. I figured that was OK. ANYWAY, this isn’t very interesting.

LIAM: Yeah, stop talking, let me continue.

DOM: Neither’s Haneke, so that’s alright.

LIAM: You’re rubbish. So, I can’t really talk about those ten or so TV movies he made, but I can start off by talking about his short film for Lumiere and Company, which was that collection of short films where 41 directors were challenged to make a 59 second film with one of the early Lumiere cameras and to do it all in one take. Lynch’s is ingenious, it’s probably one of the best things he’s ever made, but in the case of Haneke’s… it’s not marvelous. I mean, it’s certainly interesting to see TV images through an early Lumiere camera, however… viewing it as what it is as opposed to through the lens of a Lumiere camera, it’s just shots of television. And it’s kind of like someone’s parody of a Michael Haneke project, just endless shots of television.

DOM: It’s probably Michel Han-eekah’s…

LIAM: It was Michel Han-eekah’s revenge, yes.

DOM: *laughs* So when was the Lumiere short made?

LIAM: The Lumiere short was in 1995, I think. I thought I’d get that one short film out of the way; his first feature film was The Seventh Continent, which is easily the most optimistic movies about Australia ever.

DOM: *laughs*

LIAM:I’m sure that a lot of Europeans would have seen The Seventh Continent and thought “Wow, I need to go to Australia, and throw away every shred of having lived in Austria”. Yeah. It’s a pretty depressing movie. Unbelievably bleak. During this period of going through Haneke’s films I’d watch one and go “Jeez, that’s one of the bleakest films I’ve ever seen, if not THE bleakest film”, watch another one and go “OK, that was probably bleaker”. And The Seventh Continent is probably the bleakest.

DOM: It’s based on a true story as well, isn’t it?

LIAM: Yeah, it is.

DOM: Something he read in the paper, about a family who just committed suicide for no reason whatsoever.

LIAM: They just decided that life was so unbearably monotonous that when their own child calmly said to them “I see no point in living” they thought “Well, if our child, the future of our family can’t see themselves having a future, let’s just end it here”.

DOM: What they needed was Natalie Portman to come and lighten them up. *laughs*

LIAM: *laughs* You’re a massive idiot. Well, to be honest, before I went through Haneke’s filmography my view of Austria was pretty much derived from Inspector Rex. But now Haneke makes me think of Austria as being this cold, pessimistic place.

DOM: No happy dogs.

LIAM: No, although if there were they’d be beaten up with golf clubs. I was really into The Seventh Continent, and I mean, I remember reading the synopsis and… Oh yeah, whatever you do, if you haven’t seen the film do NOT read the synopsis on the back of the dvd, do NOT go on Wikipedia, and most importantly, do NOT read this Projectorheads article, because it’s something that is so easily spoiled.

DOM: I knew one spoiler when I watched it but I didn’t know all of it, so…

LIAM: If you know the big one then it might be a drag, because you’d spend the whole film knowing the inevitable. I had thankfully forgotten, though And this was the case with Twin Peaks too, I had read a spoiler for something major, forgot it, and then a week after seeing it I read the spoiler and thought “Oh wait, I haveread that before”.

DOM: That spoiler is that *CENSORED* is killed by *CENSORED*.

LIAM: If you’re wondering why the above is censored: no, Stephen Conroy’s internet filter has not been implemented yet (although it’s only a matter of time before it is), I have censored the spoiler to make sure Twin Peaks isn’t accidentally spoiled for other Projectorheads. I cannot repeat the mistakes of my past. *imitating the Giant from Twin Peaks* “It…is…happening…again…”

DOM: But this is a movie site, we don’t care if we spoil TV! It’s a lower artform, remember? *laughs*

LIAM: *laughs* Well anyway, I know that Haneke had done a lot of television work, but The Seventh Continent is a pretty solidly directed debut. I saw it after Hidden and The Piano Teacher, and in those films he had these really intimate and imposing camera angles; the characters don’t have a lot of space to move in, and as an audience it feels claustrophobic. The camera doesn’t react to their movements, it’s static and gives the illusion that they are confined to the frame. He has a lot of that in The Seventh Continent, and it just surprises me that his first film employed these well-thought out techniques. It’s very confident.

DOM: It feels a bit TV movie-ish, actually.

LIAM: It sort of does, yeah, though I’m not sure why.

DOM: It’s kind of like Mulholland Drive. There is just something about it that feels like a television pilot. And I mean, it was! Sort of. With The Seventh Continent, is it the graininess of the picture, or… ?

LIAM:It was probably just the equipment available, as he used TV equipment to make it. Probably the format of the film or whatever. I think it was actually funded by the television station that he worked for, but don’t quote me on that. Actually, Haneke said that when it debuted at Cannes, more people were horrified at the scene where they flush their money down the toilet than the child dying. While he has a point, I have to say that not knowing what happens it is a pretty powerful blow to the mind when we see the money being flushed down the toilet, because the film is structured in such a way that, you know, they’re writing letters to their parents about their marriage and everything, and then they’re talking about going to Australia, and it’s actually optimistic. You start to think it’s going in a certain direction, when they get their money out of the bank you think “Alright, they’re just about to head off to Australia to start a new life”, and then the next scene is them flushing away hundreds and thousands of dollars down the toilet, before systematically breaking everything in the house, disconnecting their phone line and then killing themselves. Yeah, so it comes as some surprise. While the child dying is the most horrifying part of the film, no doubts about that, the money scene comes as more of a shock to the audience as its the first major sign of the family’s mental decline. I also like the scene where the child fakes blindness for no reason. And that’s The Seventh Continent, the best film about Australia EVER. I reckon Baz Luhrmann should have made Australia a sequel to The Seventh Continent, where the family somehow survives, gets on the plane and lives a happy, fulfilling life. With 300+ hours of unused footage and a tourism ad campaign, plus Nicole Kidman.

DOM: They could go on walkabout. What year was The Seventh Continent?

LIAM: 1989, I think.

DOM: The year I was born [NOTE: either Dom misheard, or he is simply stupid. He was born in 1988]. So, will you score it?

Ahh, it’s a Rating: from me, I really liked The Seventh Continent. When I say “liked”… *laughs* it’s probably the most depressing movie I’ve ever seen, I was in a mind-numbing state of coldness for days on end. As I say, the colour scheme in his Austrian trilogy is just so clinical, white and asylum-ish, sometimes blue and low-key, and it makes Austria feel like the coldest, most inhumane place on the planet *laughs* But that’s just in his films, it’s not the reality, although it doesn’t help with the recent Josef Fritzl thing. But then again, there’s always Inspector Rex to watch, that’ll always lighten our spirits.

DOM: Even some of that is dark and gritty.

LIAM: I guess. I reckon Haneke should’ve directed an episode of Inspector Rex when he was making television shows. He could’ve for all we know. Maybe Michel Han-eekah did!

DOM: *laughs*

LIAM: Anyway, now we move onto Benny’s Video, his second feature film. I remember there was this one day where Dom and I were talking about movies, and Dom brought up Funny Games, which I had read about. So, on a whim, I decided that day to get both Funny Games and Benny’s Video. I was actually in a way more interested in Benny’s Video based on its synopsis; I sort of suspected that might’ve been the one to get me into Haneke. Yeah, I liked Funny Games much more on the second viewing. I don’t know why I didn’t dig Funny Games so much the first time, probably because I wasn’t expecting to be so confronted. I think I might’ve expected it to be a European slasher movie *laughs*.

DOM: I think it’s because we hyped it for so long, because you and I were talking about it for weeks and weeks before we got it. The other strange thing is that I was interested in it since last year, and it’s very odd to me that… I was interested in it purely because of the image in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die of the kid with the bag on his head; I thought “Wow, this looks…” *laughs* I probably shouldn’t say “cool”, but it looked interesting. We watched it, I was like “Yeah, that was pretty good” and you were all “HOLY SHIT, HANEKE!” And I was thinking “Wait, what?”

LIAM: After Funny Games?

DOM: No no, I mean, you suddenly had this Haneke phase. Not immediately after seeing Funny Games.

LIAM: It took me a while though, unlike my infamous David Lynch phase. It took me until… ahh, it must have been after Hidden, because I remember liking Benny’s Video, thinking Funny Games was alright, and ahh… yeah, it must’ve been Hidden that kickstarted my interest in his work. I think I spread it out a little bit, unlike Lynch where I watched Mulholland Drive, didn’t really get it; watched Blue Velvet, thought it was awesome; rewatched Mulholland Drive, loved it to bits and then suddenly got into this massive obsessive headphase. Anyway, Benny’s Video.

DOM: The other funny thing about us watching those two is that they have the same actor.

LIAM: They do!

DOM: He’s Paul in Funny Games and Benny in Benny’s Video. I can’t remember his name in real life, though.

LIAM: Neither can I. He hasn’t been in a lot, actually, it’s a shame.

DOM: He should’ve been in Funny Games U.S., still speaking in Austrian *laughs*.

LIAM:He is a lot better than… who is it? I think it’s Michael Pitt. Now BACK to Benny’s Video.

DOM: You should comment on the animal thing.

LIAM: *laughs* Oh yeah. I should say, Haneke has this big thing about… killing animals, really!

DOM: *laughs*

LIAM: Maybe it’s that thing psychologists say, that sex offenders and potential murderers and people who cannot control their violent outbursts are the kinds who used to torture animals as kids. Since Haneke was forty or something when he made Benny’s Video, maybe when he’s around ninety he’ll randomly start torturing people.

DOM: Serial killer with a zimmer-frame.

LIAM: Well, you know how his next film is a film about aging with Isabelle Huppert? Maybe he kills her! But yeah, here’s a checklist: In The Seventh Continent, the father gets an axe and smashes the aquarium and all the fish flail and die slowly. While there isn’t any animal death IN Benny’s Video, there’s stock footage of a pig getting tasered to death.

DOM: Tasered?

LIAM: Yeah.

DOM: It’s one of those pressure gun things, isn’t it? Like the thing the guy uses in No Country for Old Men.

LIAM: Oh okay, maybe not a taser then. 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, I can’t remember, I don’t think there is any animal death.

DOM: You’ll get to that later.

LIAM: In Funny Games there’s a dog that gets clobbered with a golf club, which is, you know, pretty cool.

DOM: *laughs*

LIAM: There’s death in Code Unknown, but no animal death.

DOM: Is there much point in saying there’s death in a Haneke film?

LIAM: Well, Haneke’s a pretty optimistic guy! The Piano Teacher, no; Time of the Wolf, yes; there is a horse that gets shot.

DOM: And its throat is cut open when it’s still alive.

LIAM: Which is pretty nasty.

DOM: You can see the terror in its eyes, it’s horrible. And there are no wolves in Time of the Wolf.

LIAM: I know! I was misled. I watched it thinking Haneke would kill wolves next, but it turned out to be a horse. Maybe he took inspiration from Gaspar Noe, because of the beginning of Carne. That’s probably harder to watch than the scene in Time of the Wolf. And in Hidden, there is a chicken that gets its head cut off. You won’t believe this, but *laughs* a dog gets clobbered to death with a golf club in Funny Games U.S.

DOM: No way!

LIAM: Anyway, I list these animal deaths for a reason: his latest film, The White Ribbon, which won the Palme d’Or this year QUITE DESERVINGLY…

DOM: Is that supposed to be thrown at me?

LIAM: I don’t know. But basically, in the first five minutes, a horse trips over a wire and dies. But the horse is CGI! And I noticed that the other animal that dies, the bird, its death happens off-screen! In fact, it doesn’t even “happen” in the film, Haneke just cuts to it later, dead. I thought “Man, Haneke’s really mellowing out”. Maybe he had a mid-life crisis of conscience and thought “God, I need to stop killing animals!” so now he just likes killing CGI animals. He even went and joined the World Wildlife Fund.

DOM: He’s a vegetarian now.

LIAM: Haneke could well be a vegetarian, you never know.

DOM: He eats CGI meat.

LIAM: ANYWAY, BENNY’S VIDEO. Benny’s performance is great. I especially like the scene where they’re in the boys’ choir, drug dealing behind the teacher’s back. I associate choirs with Austria now, because I’ve seen plenty of choirs in Inspector Rex and in this.

DOM: And The League of Gentlemen’s Christmas Special.

LIAM: True. But yeah, the scene where they’re all singing in the choir and passing prescription pills and money back and forth behind their backs, that’s really well done. Haneke is being very critical of video kids in this one, like Kevin Smith *laughs*. But seriously, he’s specifically targeting the kind of video kids who hire out violent snuff films and sadistically consider them a source of entertainment. Another thing I really like is how Benny sets up the camera outside his window, closes the blinds and looks at the scenery through his monitor. He just prefers watching things through a television. Reality bores him.

DOM: Let’s list the number of things Haneke dislikes in his films.

LIAM: He doesn’t like racism.

DOM: *laughs* Well, fair enough! He doesn’t like racism, he doesn’t like video kids, he doesn’t like torture porn, he doesn’t like adults according to The White Ribbon, he doesn’t like Nazis, which amazes me. How could you not like Nazis? And he doesn’t like… post-apocalyptic futures, I don’t know. And he doesn’t like S&M.

LIAM: He doesn’t like television, or the Daytona 500.

DOM: And he doesn’t like goldfish. I think that just about settles it.

LIAM: He doesn’t like golf, either, it’s his least favourite sport. He thinks it’s too slow and boring, and hates the fact that virtually nothing happens.

DOM: *laughs* He’d prefer it if the golfers hit each other, or hit dogs.

LIAM: I always get this thing of “God, why are you doing this, Haneke?” when watching his films. Some things are so painfully inevitable that you kind of hate it while watching it. In the case of Benny’s Video, the bit where he randomly shoots the girl to see what violence is like in reality, following a really base impulse. God, that agonising static shot as she twitches on the floor, that was hell. Two minutes pass and then Benny thinks “Oh wait, maybe I’ve made a mistake here” and begins to conceal the body. I suppose it’s that moment of psychosis, where… kind of like the kids inThe White Ribbon, you know, not really registering what you’re doing. Also I should say, Benny’s Video carries on Haneke’s tradition of naming his characters Georges and Anna; it started in The Seventh Continent, continues in Benny’s Video, possibly 71 Fragments, I can’t remember; Funny Games, yes; Code Unknown… I don’t know. The Piano Teacher, no; Time of the Wolf, yes; Hidden, yes; Funny Games U.S., no shit; The White Ribbon, no. Yeah, that’s all I can really articulate, it’s hard for me to say more about Benny’s Video.

DOM: Score?

LIAM: Ahh, I think Rating: will suffice. 71 Fragments is going to be even harder to talk about it, as I don’t really remember a lot about it. First time I saw it I was pretty neutral to it as I’d seen Code Unknown a day before. 71 Fragments sort of sets up a template that Code Unknown follows, a series of episodes usually captured in a single take, followed by a cut to black that signals the end of the “fragment”. Code Unknown uses it a lot more effectively which is why I so was neutral to 71 Fragments, it just seemed like a less interesting, less confronting version of Code Unknown. Tackled some similar themes too. That’s all I really want to say about it. While I liked it better on the second viewing, it’s not brilliant. I’ll give it a Rating: .

DOM: Now, it’s time for Funny Games.

LIAM:It was Haneke’s international breakout. Benny’s Video’s bleakness resulted in some attention, but at the time it probably generated more notoriety than interest. Funny Games debuted at Cannes, and while it wasn’t exactly acclaimed, he received international attention and it has become a cult hit since. His next one was Code Unknown, a big jump from Funny Games, which he made because Juliette Binoche said “I want to work with Michael Haneke”. When I read that I thought “Wow, really? Based on Funny Games, a cathartic film condemning the glorification of violence in cinema, 71 Fragments and Benny’s Video which tackles similar ideas but focuses on televised violence, and The Seventh Continent, a distressing movie about family suicide. OK!” Although I guess she has been in some pretty depressing movies. Three Colours: Blue wasn’t exactly the most optimistic movie ever.

DOM: She probably confused him with Michel Han-eekah.

LIAM: *laughs* First time I saw Funny Games I didn’t know a lot about Haneke, so I wasn’t expecting it to be such an essay against violence as entertainment. At the time I wasn’t expecting to be so challenged, I did not expect Haneke to get on his moral high-horse and begin lecturing. Obviously I have changed since then, and now I like being challenged and provoked. But to be honest, I prefer Haneke when he makes a strong point with a subtle, layered delivery instead of being right in your face. Critics seem to prefer his work when his message is subdued and hidden. Like Hidden!

DOM: We’ve suspected recently that it’s possible to misread Funny Games if you’re not familiar with Haneke’s moral agenda. Especially with the American remake and all. I wonder about it, because you know how at the end of Scream, the two killers are like “Yeah, what’s our motive? We don’t have a motive!” I have this strange suspicion that someone might assume that Haneke is making the exact same point that Wes Craven is making in Scream, which would be totally wrong. In other words, you could watch something like Taxi Driver and say “It’s about Travis Bickle’s nihilism and how he wants to clean up the streets and blah blah blah” and then you can probably then go and misread Funny Games and think it’s sort of similar, that it’s an investigation of upper/middle class people and how bored their lives are, which is why they resort to acts of random violence. But in Funny Games, the two boys spit upon that theory. It has nothing to do with that whatsoever, it’s got to do literally with violence in film. But I get the feeling that people have misread it. There’s also that argument where people accuse Haneke of hypocrisy, for criticising violence in film while having violence IN his films. But I don’t think Haneke is saying films shouldn’t have violence, I think he’s saying that they shouldn’t have violence that should be enjoyed, is the thing. Nothing wrong with showing violence, but if you’re going to show it, you have to show that it is, in fact, violence. I don’t 100% with Haneke on this but I think his point is really well made.

LIAM: Haneke is referring specifically to, as he says, the “American down-the-barrel” cinema.

DOM: Stuff like Hostel and Saw, yeah.

LIAM: And like, these revenge fantasy movies you get in American cinema. Vengence movies. And this is what I like about Irreversible: you’re confronted straight away with the revenge, so you don’t have that emotional manipulation of…

DOM: Of “Yeah, these guys deserve it, because look what they’ve done to that woman!” You don’t know anything they’ve done. And it turns out to be the wrong guy!

LIAM: Yeah, just goes to show that you can’t use violence to justify revenge, not in any circumstance.

DOM: As I say, I don’t agree with Haneke entirely on that, but I do hate revenge films. I don’t hate films that have violence in a kind of “hey look, it’s fun” way, as it’s a fictional thing, but I hate revenge films. And it reminds me of when I was watching Sin City, and a person said to me “Don’t you ever wish you could throw off the shackles of the law and just do what you want?” and I was like “Are you serious? Of course I wouldn’t want to mob people, I wouldn’t want to do that!” I wouldn’t want people to do that. I don’t think “Wow, wouldn’t it be cool if I could shoot the shit out of people for hitting my woman” like Frank Miller would.

LIAM: The amount of people who agree with the guy in Death Note is a bit unsettling.

DOM: That’s… distressing, that. That literally scares the shit out of me.

LIAM: There are some strange people out there. So yeah, I was very much surprised by Funny Games, but due to my idiocy at the time I was cross at Haneke for telling me what to do. But since I have matured, I think it’s pretty neat.

DOM: So, score?

LIAM: Funny Games is probably a Rating: for me. Next is Code Unknown, which is really, really good.

DOM: *laughs* We have to get this right: its official title, is it Code Unknown or Code Unkown?

LIAM: *laughs* I’ll explain: Tom Bown from Projectorheads bragged for ages about how superior his Haneke boxset was to mine, because his had The Castle, which I haven’t seen, and Funny Games U.S. which was not very good, so I don’t know why he was trying to make me jealous.

DOM: Hang on, it has The Castle? So Haneke has made two films about Australia! *laughs*

LIAM: God, I saw The Castle in his filmography on IMDB and for a second couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Michael Haneke, the director behind an Australian cultural classic? But about Bown’s boxset: after we compared them, he said to me “Hmm, what the hell? Code Unknown is misspelt as Code Unkown!” But what’s interesting is that when I bought my boxset, the Madman Directors Suite one, my Code Unknown is the odd one out! It’s not by Directors Suite, which usually has a set template design so you know it’s a Directors Suite DVD; it’s this totally blue DVD from Accent or something. I talk a bit about it here:

http://www.projectorheads.com/2009/10/binoches-blurred-face-would-be-a-better-olympics-logo-than-the-simpsons-incest-one/

DOM: Haneke’s trying to make a point with the distribution of these films.

LIAM: You look at it and all the spines are the same except for Code Unknown, it’s hilarious. And the strangest thing is, Code Unknown IS available through Directors Suite, so I don’t know why it wasn’t included. Maybe they didn’t have the rights to it when they made the boxset. It’s just weird that what we have in common with our boxsets is that one is misspelt, and one just doesn’t belong.

DOM: So what is the code, before we go on with this discussion.

LIAM: Well, see, the code is in fact known. I don’t remember it but Juliette Binoche gives it out to her nephew in the beginning of the film. So it is known. Her code is kown. Anyway, I really like Code Unknown’s first scene.

DOM: I think it’s the best opening scene in a Haneke film, for me. I sort of thought while watching it, “Holy shit, this is like a flawless scene”, whereas every other scene was totally flawed *laughs*

LIAM: Very funny. I feel like rewatching it now. Yeah, it’s brilliant, the one with all the deaf children…

DOM: Ohh, I was talking about the scene after it.

LIAM: Oh, right. Well, that’s amazing too.

DOM: The scene where the nephew walks down the road, meets Binoche and then has the argument with the black guy.

LIAM: I was going to talk about that, but yeah, I was talking about the scene that proceeds it; the deaf children all playing charades, trying to get the little girl to articulate her feelings. But she can’t. She shakes her head to each of the suggestions. It’s brilliant. The next scene is immensely frustrating because of how believable it is and feels like a precursor to Hidden, which is helped by the fact that Juliette Binoche is in both films. Basically its this one long take as Binoche and her nephew walk down this street. Binoche goes off somewhere, the nephew has this paper bag in his hand, scrunches it up and throws it into the lap of a homeless woman. She opens it expectantly and finds nothing, it’s just rubbish that he’s thrown at her. Then a black guy comes up to him and says “What did you do that for?”

DOM: Pretty much as soon as he walks up to him you know what’s going to happen, and that’s what’s horrible about it. As soon as he confronts the guy, you know he’s going to end up arrested.

LIAM: There is a scuffle, yeah, as the black guy rightly confronts him and asks “Why would you humiliate this woman in a public space and remind her of her situation, make a spectacle of her?” He tells him to apologise, the nephew pushes him a bit, they get into a fight and yes, the black guy is arrested. It’s sad because it’s so utterly believable. The fact that it happens in a single take is convincing, too, it naturally transitions from one event to another. Code Unknown is full of riveting ideas; I liked it the first time I watched it but I was so confused. Among the range of themes and ideas, I love how it fluctuates between Juliette Binoche’s film that she is making and reality. And like you said to me, it’s weird how for a second… you know how they’re doing ADR for the film, where they’re in the pool? For a second, you take it as reality, as there’s a completely unnoticeable transition between it and reality. I thought “Hang on, what’s going on?” even though it’s very obviously not reality, as she has a completely new husband, some guy we hadn’t seen previously in the film. It’s weird.

DOM: *laughs* It IS weird. It happened to Liam AND I, we just assumed it was her. Neither of us realised. I don’t know what the deal is with that.

LIAM: I really liked the scene with the montage of photographs where the war photographer explains that he has been using a hidden camera on a train, taking pictures of people without them knowing. In some cases they do realise, but out of politeness or an awkwardness they’re afraid to tell him to stop. It makes me wonder if they WERE candid shots, because the looks on their faces would’ve been so hard to fake.

DOM: Maybe that’s why you like Yi Yi more than I do, because you’re obsessed with the idea of taking photos of people without them knowing, or filming them without knowing. Big thing for you *laughs*

LIAM: I don’t know about that, Dom! But my favourite scene in Code Unknown – which is again very believable like the fight over the homeless woman – is the scene where Binoche is ironing her clothes in her apartment. She turns off the TV because she thinks she can hear something. It’s the sound of a child crying out from one of the other rooms. Binoche seizes up. After 20 seconds of silence and contemplation, as if thinking of going over and doing something about it, she turns the television back on and continues ironing. I also was really creeped out by the scene where we see Binoche in this closed up room through the lens of a digital camera, and the cameraman informs her that she is stuck in this room and that he’s going to kill her. She laughs it off, and then it slowly dawns on her how serious he is, but not in a menacing way, he just states it. “You’re going to die, I’m going to lock you up here, and I’m going to kill you”. What makes it especially terrifying is realising that Haneke is the guy behind the camera. It’s almost like a bizarre link to Hidden. Code Unknown was a fascinating film with a great diversity of rich ideas. I’ll give it a Rating: . What’s next? Oh yeah, The Piano Teacher. Again, I’m pretty certain that Isabelle Huppert said “I would like to work with Michael Haneke”.

DOM: “Here I am.”

LIAM: Yes, I love that story, how she walked up the steps of a French acting academy, knocked on the door and said “Here I am”. Legendary stuff. It’s interesting that these mega-revered French actresses have wanted to work with Haneke. I wonder why Haneke decided to start making movies in France; probably because of Huppert and Binoche’s invitation. The Piano Teacher is an adaptation of The Piano Teacher, no surprises there, which won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s a story about a piano teacher in a community of classical musicians, enduring years of sexual repression. Her mother calls her constantly to find out where she is and what she’s doing, preventing her from pursuing relationships with men. Some scenes are just so painful to watch, like the scene where the guy and the girl are having sex in their car, and she kneels beside the car, listens to them going at it and awkwardly starts masturbating. Then the guy realises she’s there and starts calling out to her, then follows her as she hurriedly walks away, blushing horribly, her nose held high. One of the scenes that opened my eyes was the scene where Erika first walks into the porn stall. I didn’t know what The Piano Teacher was about before watching it, so yes, a little bit unexpected. It reminds me: one night, my parents went through my DVDs looking for a movie to watch and they settled on The Piano Teacher. Now, if you look at the cover, it’s pretty deceiving; It looks like a heartfelt romance film when really it’s about a masochistic piano teacher with some bizarre repressed sexual fantasies. Thank GOD they decided to watch something else.

DOM: That happened to me, too. I was watching it on my computer and my cousin walked in as he often does and said “Hey, what are you watching?” and I was like “Ahh, The Piano Teacher.” and it was this scene where they were doing recitals, playing note-perfect Schumann pieces and I thought “Oh God, it looks like I’m watching the most pretentious film”, even though the point of it is that the characters are pretentious. He asked “So what’s it about, it is just about people who play pianos?” And I said “No, it’s about a piano teacher who cuts her student’s fingers on glass and is into sadomasochistic sex and masturbates outside of cars and has an incestuous relationship with her mother” and basically listed the worst possible stuff in the film, and he was like “Oh… really?”. It was great, because it threw him off totally. Nothing better than to mislead people.

LIAM: That’s another insane moment, where she spots her lover and her student very innocently flirting. It seemed obvious to me that he had no intention of it going anywhere, but that’s not how she saw it. Quietly fuming, she walks into the coatroom, puts a glass into the student’s coat pocket and stamps on it. So when the student puts her hand in her pocket, it gets all cut up and sabotages her career. She is unable to play the piano again. And the final scene in The Piano Teacher is incredibly sad and pathetic; Isabelle Huppert is so good in her portrayal of the character. After her lover’s violent confrontation with her, she takes a knife out and stabs herself in the shoulder, makes a face of utter revulsion. Then she just walks away. She doesn’t even do it in a public space, she waits until the auditorium clears out and then does it with no intention of making a spectacle of her problems. She walks away and that’s it, no conclusion. It’s very sad. I will probably give it a Rating: . It’s believable. Even though I’ve had some great piano teachers in the past, I have known people like Erika; rigid, cold and clinical, no feeling put into the music, playing the pieces precisely how they’re written, etc. I knew one piano teacher who lived in the cellar of his mum’s house, and yeah, whenever there was a girl in the room he acted very differently, as if he was constantly aware of them watching. There were a lot of nervous glances. I think it’s an accurate portrait. Now we’re moving onto Time of the Wolf, again starring Isabelle Huppert. I remember talking to my friend in Sweden, a real Haneke fan, and he told me that he thought “God, you can’t do that, Haneke!” after watching the first five minutes of the movie. It’s true, despite Haneke’s track record for merciless disposal of characters, you don’t expect him to kill off one of the main characters so early on. Despite the horror that goes on, Time of the Wolf is beautifully shot. I’ve posted screenshots in cinematography discussion threads, but screenshots can’t really do the film justice. Oh! And that’s another animal that dies in Time of the Wolf: the little boy’s budgie. That scene is heartbreaking. I was blown away by the scene of Isabelle Huppert holding a flaming bale of hay walking around in total darkness as she searchs for her little boy. Then the barn catches on fire and it’s incredible to look at. It’s probably Haneke’s most minimal film. I mean, the cinematography is beautiful and detailed, but in terms of what goes on within the frame, yeah, not a lot happens. The dad gets shot, the kid’s bird dies, they walk around, run after a train yelling for help, meet some people, fairly vague events. Also, Time of the Wolf probably has the most ambiguous ending out of all of Haneke’s films, and that’s a big claim. Not much more I can say. I did like the final scene with the boy and the fire, and I was glad that it ended on a slightly hopeful note, even if the FINAL final scene was ambiguous. I’ll give this Rating: . I definitely think it’s the most beautifully photographed Haneke film. He’s collaborated with one cinematographer quite a bit, who worked on his Austrian trilogy – The Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video and Funny Games, and recently The White Ribbon. At least I think it’s the same guy.