Amour (2012)

This blog went into a slumber a while ago and that's mostly due to my new hectic work/school schedule. The simple truth is that I don't have time to write anymore. And when I squeeze in an hour or two here and there, I seem to lack the capacity to write. Call it mental fatigue, writer's block ... either way, I'm the one to blame for the prolonged radio silence. Despite this apparent lack of temporal and mental resources, once in a blue moon something comes along and compels me to brandish my keyboard (no euphemism there) and type some nonsensical reasons why I like or dislike a film. Amour is one such beast.

71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)

Personally, from a purely cinematic point of view, the last decade belonged to Michael Haneke. With the glaring exception of his own remake of Funny Games (2007), his output has been nothing short of spectacular: Code Unknown (2000), The Piano Teacher (2001), The Time of the Wolf (2004), Hidden (2005), and The White Ribbon (2009). Their immediate ambiguity is frustrating, but in Haneke's hands, his singular characters and stories become elemental parts of a sublime metanarrative of societal decay.

The seeds of his themes were sown a decade prior to this run of films. His "Glaciation Trilogy" shows in abundance what their director aims to convey with stories that are difficult to penetrate, but all too familiar. 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance contains thematic and aesthetic elements of the previous two installment in the trilogy: The Seventh Continent (1989) and Benny's Video (1992). It takes the former's ambiguous narrative technique and enhances it with disparate characters and seemingly parallel storylines. It borrows Benny from the latter and puts him in a different mould as a young Romanian boy stealing his way through the streets of Vienna.

There isn't a story per se - it is literally a collection of fragments of unrelated people of Vienna: alongside the aforementioned young boy there is a couple who would like to adopt; a bank security van driver, who prays everyday in the bathroom for the end of his wife's depression; a grumpy old men moaning his indifferent and cold daughter; a 19-year-old Swiss student who just might have had enough ... and so on.

It should be pretty captivating. Sadly, it is not. From a narrative perspective, by giving away the ending in the beginning in a literal way, the audience are forced to relate to only a single character. Every decision henceforth are judged by how approximate we are to the promised climax, which defies the whole purpose. It is arguable that it wasn't Haneke's intention to make a genre thriller, but there is no way we can know what his intentions were. What made the previous two films captivating (there's that word again) is that despite their non-flashy narrative and visual style, they kept you guessing as to how this entropy will finally come about. The decay is there - it's ever-present, but it's the way in which it comes about is really interesting. That is why Code Unknown and Hidden were absolutely mesmerising.

Haneke's '90s films deserves as much attention as his slightly more mainstream '00s output. However, it feels like with 71 Fragments ... Haneke had taken a slightly backwards step. I guess the man is entitled to one dud per decade.

Benny's Video (1992)

Michael Haneke's films have been quite ubiquitous in London the past couple of months: White Ribbon had its premiere at the London Film Festival and BFI ran a Haneke season at the South Bank. The man himself even showed up to introduce the film, which was a great welcome back to form after the what-in-the-name-of-Succubus-were-you-thinking Funny Games remake.

Benny's Video is the follow-up to the bizarre and slightly pointless The Seventh Continent (1989) and it is no less disturbing ... well, which of his films isn't? Plot-wise unrelated it may be, Benny's Video is a prequel-of-sorts to Funny Games (the vastly superior original): both films feature Ulrich Muhe and Arno Frisch and it is also not difficult to see Benny (Frisch) growing up to be the sadistic Paul.

Benny is a spoiled little brat - he is a teenager living in a swanky apartment with his rich parents. His room is adorned with state-of-the-art early 90s video equipment with black blinds covering his windows. To make up for the isolation, he has a live feed of the view from the window on a telly 24/7. His parents are aware of their son's obsession, but don't seem to care much. Benny is also obsessed with a video that he shot himself, in which a pig is killed by an air gun a la Anton Chigurh. Benny watches this video over and over again, rewinding (future reference for Funny Games) to watch the poor pig getting killed again in slow motion. One day, while his parents are away for the weekend, he brings a girl he meets at the video store back home. He shows her the air gun, which he stole from the farm, and things take a rather bloody turn. Meanwhile, Benny's ever-running camera is recording the action, which is off-screen.

Benny's initial lack of remorse really beggars belief, but then there appear subtle hints at his restlessness, such as an ad hoc decision to shave his head. Unable to live with what he's done, he comes clean to his parents. And this is when the film really goes left-field. What will the parents do? And what effect will that have on Benny's upbringing?

The sense of dread is ever present, even in the idyllic Red Sea scenes with Benny and his mother. It is a tired old cliche, but "what you don't see is scarier than what you actually see" fits this film like a glove (more cliches ... sorry). Haneke takes this one step further by showing an extended vacation sequence that masks a ghastly act that we know is taking place.

This ghastly act, as it's pointed out multiple times throughout the film, is the Bosnian War. At one point, when Benny's father walks into his room and sees him watching the news. They are showing footage of a small Croatian town being attacked by the Serbian military. The father asks what's on the news and Benny replies: "Nothing. They're not saying anything". This sums up the film, and the period that it is set, perfectly. Bosnian War was happening in the heart of Europe - not so far away from Vienna, where this is set. Yet, it was "behind closed doors". It was always "off-screen".

In essence, Benny's Video is more than a criticism of an apathetic youth growing up with sensory overload or parental neglect in the name of keeping up status quo - it is one of the most subtle anti-war and anti-apathy films I have ever seen.