Director Michael Haneke (White Ribbon, Funny
Games, Cache) has perfected the art of cultivating audience discomfort with
shots that violate our sense of personal intimacy. In short, Haneke uses shot
techniques and character interactions that violate our most taken-for-granted
personal spaces. For instance, in the self-conscious Funny Games
(2007; 1997) a pair of unlikely petulant young serial killers are invited into
unsuspecting family's vacation homes under false pretenses. After being invited
in to "borrow an egg or two" they proceed to escalate the tension by
requesting inappropriate accommodations and asking questions that violate
common decency, until the tension ultimately produces an explosion of violence.
For us, the discomfort of Funny Games is in its resonate violation of person
intimacy. The two killers are not spectacular monsters, but rather mundane
overprivileged sadists. The terror they inflict is on the personal space
of the home (emasculating the father, sexually terrorizing the mother, forcing
the family to play games that pit them against each other with torture and
death the inevitable outcome etc.). Haneke makes the audience an intimate
member of the family, taking us along what would have otherwise been a family's
pleasant but ultimately boring vacation. After we are invited into the home, he
tears it to pieces. The violation is accentuated by the killers direct
address of the audience. The killers use a "universal remote" to
rewind the film itself after making a fatal mistake that results in their
captives gaining the upper hand. One of the killers looks at the camera and in
so many words tells the audience to give up their own revenge and escape
fantasies: its not that kind of film. The audience is reminded that they
are also the captives, so they might as well play along with the killers
sadistic fantasies (the inference being they represent the latent blood lust of the horror film audience). After the family is finally dispatched, the pair
moves on to the next home, reminding us that the cycle of violence and
bloodshed will continue without consequence.
Haneke brings audiences into places we
typically have no business being (or at least places where the audience is not
supposed to go; the spaces of ellipses where gaps in time (cuts) are connected
through inference). Of course, many films bring us into the home, but not with
the kind of uncomfortable intimacy Haneke cultivates. It is his technique that
at once constructs a sacred intimate space and violates our comfort by
introducing something person or force that represents the profane. For
instance, in White Ribbon (2009) Haneke takes us inside the homes and community
of interwar rural Germany. Throughout the film, rising actions that violate the
community's strict religious norms are never actually depicted but nonetheless
cue us into the inevitability of a reactionary response by the town's male
authority figures. We see very little action, only causes and consequences. We
are taken into the homes of “the Volk” and invited to take note of the abusive
and reactionary (perceptually mystical) forces that ultimately give rise to
German fascism. The actions are mundane; the consequences are tragic.
Similar to Haneke’s other films, Amour is a beautiful yet painfully intimate and fearless portrayal of precarious life. It depicts the
life-long bond of an elderly couple (Georges and Anne, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) tested by human frailty. As Anne suffers
a series of debilitating strokes, Georges struggles to maintain her dignity and
care, as he vacillates between perspectives of debt and obligation to burden
and liability. The story takes place inside the cloistered world of their Paris
apartment and is filmed predominantly in a medium shot that captures the facial
expressions and body language of each character as they respond to each
other’s presence and absence. What is remarkable is how Haneke makes the
audience live in the mundane and uncomfortable space between the ellipses: long
takes of Georges brushing his teeth, reading, listening to music; the couple
sharing routine conversations and meals together (both of which become more
difficult as the Anne’s condition worsens).
Typically, shots are cut and
arranged to create visual storytelling that infers connections between
disparate moments and places where action is inferred. Consider how montages
advance the action by speeding up time through jump cuts that infer not only
character improvement but also a significant passage of time. The spaces in
between are often erased to make room for only significant actions. Audiences
can infer that the characters eat, sleep, and go to bathroom without the
actions being explicitly represented. Haneke, however, builds tension and
propels the story not only through cuts that infer the passage of time but also
through long takes of events that most films would edit out for continuity and
efficiency. Again, the audience is held captive in the couple’s apartment, much
like the couple themselves whose world has shrunk on account of Anne’s failing
health.
As he did in Funny Games,
Haneke positions the audience as an uncomfortable voyeur that - by virtue of
watching the film - will be invited to gaze upon the parts of life that take
place in the kind of intimate spaces that they are typically not privy or
accustom. The film begins with Georges and Anne (without close ups of the
couple or any cues that they are the film’s protagonists) taking a seat in
crowded musical theater. The audience’s seating arrangement mirrors that of a
movie theater (our theater was, however, remarkably empty). The audiences are
forced to stare at each other uncomfortably, waiting for their respective shows
to begin. Perhaps this introduction is a self-conscious gesture at the film’s
voyeurism, its uncomfortable closeness to the daily activities most films spare
the audience. While this process sounds excruciating, it brings the audience
closer to understanding the smallest and taken-for-granted gestures, habits,
and behaviors that bond each of us to each other. When those intimate habits
are destabilized, made more arduous and lonely, or deprived of meaning and
value, we are forced to confront the nature of love and structure of our
frailty.
It is also remarkable that Haneke is able to achieve this effect
without the use of overwrought emotion or extreme sentimentality. He gives
attention to the detail and routine of life without wallowing in overly
dramatized and hackneyed reflections on the nature of life and death (like the kind seen in some tear-jerker films that get panned by critics). For example, Georges recalls a
film he watched in his youth. He cannot recall the details of the film or what
made him cry, only the experience of trying to recount the details of the film
to someone else and feeling ashamed that the emotions were ever more powerful
the second time around. For the audience, the details of the rising action in Amour are not as important as the
structure of feeling it evokes. When asked “what was Amour about” by a friend, I was similarly at a loss for words. The plot can be summarized quickly, as there
were very few characteristically major plot moments to mark the rising action.
Yet, when asked to recount the film today, I could not help but feel nearly
overcome with feeling and emotion. Like Georges, I could remember few of the
details in the same way that I cannot tell you what I had for breakfast or at
what time I brushed my teeth; however, I can feel the passage of the day and
describe the warming presence of others throughout the mundane exercise of my
life. Watch the film with a loved one and appreciate what Haneke attempts to
have you see in yourself.
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