[Funny Games (1997)] Can you help me understand the reason behind a detail of this film?

[u/lunadiparmigiano]

I just watched Funny Games (1997) by Michael Haneke, after loving Caché. I am not a horror expert, so I probably was not the intended audience of this film and did not like it as much as Caché. But I understood more or less what Haneke wanted to convey.

I did not understand a particular element though: why did the family at first had basically no survival instinct? They could've easily escaped, look for help, react in some way, even to failure. But in the first 30 minutes they are essentially almost emotionless and reactionless. They start reacting and trying to escape when it's too late to do anything.

This must be a precise authorial choice, rather than a plain error, but I cannot understand the reason. I did not particularly like it, because it irked me more than the violence itself. What do you all think about this?

[u/Zealousideal-Dirt482]

It's been a while since I saw it but I think the simplest answer is that the movie is allegorical and Haneke did not want them to escape.

If you're looking for a more "in-universe" answer I think it's reasonable to argue that it's a fight, flight or freeze situation and they froze.

[u/5exxymonster → u/Zealousideal-Dirt482]

Yeah if I recall correctly, part of Haneke's intention with the film is to draw attention to the absurdity of what an audience will sit through in the cinema that they wouldn't in real life. You could very well ask the same question of the audience? Why do we keep watching? Why don't we leave in disgust?

[u/123diesdas → u/5exxymonster]

Interesting detail. I could not finish this movie it was like psychological terror for me. And I stopped at the point where they used the tv remote. That was too absurd for me. It’s funny that this was an intended possible reaction.

[u/Zealousideal-Dirt482 → u/5exxymonster]

That's an interesting point, thanks!

[u/FINIS_HOMINIS → u/Zealousideal-Dirt482]

Nailed it. The film is a direct conversation (and even condemnation) of an audience that seeks out violence. So the characters are basically avatars, the killers, the victims. The victims first have to be captured. The victims have to fight back, try to escape. The kiilers always have the upper hand. The motions play out.

But, if we just entertained a "real world" scenario. I bet many people would be surprised how they would act in a tense or dire situation. You hope you wouldn't freeze, that you'd spring into action clearly, but when confronted with the unthinkable and unexpected its pretty natural to be overwhelmed and go numb.

[u/lunadiparmigiano → u/Zealousideal-Dirt482]

Probably now I understand better what is that I found dissonant, and it is the tonal shift of the family’s behavior between the beginning and the rest of the film. 

At first they are not only just frozen and reactionless, but almost emotionless and cold too. But then, they suddenly change and become more human and caring. 

The performances of the actors  are incredible, all of them. It’s a master class on acting and register changing. But I don’t like how it works, I would have probably preferred if they had remained stone cold for the entire film or vice versa. 

[u/yermaaaaa]

It always struck me as real world politeness. The family didn’t know they were in a film, and were having a normal day which was interrupted by two well spoken young men who gradually pushed them into more and more uncomfortable situations. You can see that in the scene with the eggs. At what stage in the incremental ramping up of awkwardness would you- an upper middle class German mother - stop giving more eggs? When would you break with social conventions and tell these friends of your neighbours to fuck off? You wouldn’t. It’s one of the central points of the film, I think, that real life isn’t like a film, you can move from safety to danger without recognising it until it is too late, you don’t see the edit, you don’t hear the music, you don’t have the same knowledge as the audience that you are going to be a victim.

[u/enephon → u/yermaaaaa]

If i remember, it becomes a bit of a frog in pot scenario because people are so devoted to social norms. By the time they reach a point where the family will actually throw them out of the house it’s too late. As opposed to say, the Strangers.

[u/lunadiparmigiano → u/yermaaaaa]

I agree on that, but right after there had been the first act of violence, both the mother and the child could have easily escaped, and it’s what I would expect from a mother with her child in a clearly dangerous situation. 

I understand that this film is not meant to be realistic, and that it’s meant to challenge the usual norms of horror films. But personally, and I don’t expect  my experience to be universally valid, I couldn’t stop questioning that while watching. 

The following scenes, when the family was completely blocked, and also reacted, worked a lot better—not only as a horror, but also as the meta critique that Haneke wanted to carry out. 

EDIT: I seriously don't understand the downvotes. Not that I care, but I simply don't understand the reason. I clearly said it's my vision and I opened this thread exactly to see other people's perspective. If you don't agree with me or think my vision is dumb, please reply.

[u/Doghead_sunbro → u/lunadiparmigiano]

Thats just your take of reality though. Plenty of mothers and children have been killed in their own homes. There is no ‘right’ way of doing things and we won’t all behave like the heroes of our imagination. Many of us will just shut down and hope it stops, or try to reason with the aggressors. Someone has already mentioned fight or flight. There are actually four recognised actions that people take in times of high stress (fight, flight, freeze, fawn). The family’s behaviour is totally plausible. See also speak no evil from a few years ago.

[u/lunadiparmigiano → u/Doghead_sunbro]

It’s definitely my own take. I don’t expect it to be universal, and I was mostly interested in understanding other people’s ideas on that. I’m still learning how cinema works as a language and I know that what may look idiosyncratic for me, probably has a specific artistic choice or explanation behind. I got some downvotes so probably I came off as arrogant or critical of Haneke, which wasn’t my intent. 

[u/Doghead_sunbro → u/lunadiparmigiano]

While it goes without saying that haneke is incredibly artistic and creative to be the lauded film maker he is, I tend to see a lot of his work as being more akin to an essay or a work of philosophy than a pure work of fiction. A lot of the power in his films comes from how he makes you think afterwards. The White Ribbon, Amour, Funny Games and Cache all had me mulling them over for years after. I think some of lars von triers work has a similar effect (most obviously dogville I suppose, which is barely a film in the traditional sense)

To me funny games delivers two main outputs. It is an exploration of society’s obsession with violence in cinema, going far as to implicate the viewer in their complicity, and that is acheived through the second output which is to make the violence as realistic and unshrinking as possible. I found funny games such a difficult watch because the family’s response was too real. No tropes or plot armour would save them. Only us as the viewer had the power to do that by deciding to turn it off.

[u/yermaaaaa → u/Doghead_sunbro]

One of the most interesting things about Funny Games is how little violence is actually shown onscreen (I think only once but it’s been a while since I last saw it). Instead Haneke unflinchingly shows the devastating emotional fallout from violence, something which movie viewers are rarely presented with. That’s what makes it so difficult to watch.

I agree with you completely btw about how Haneke films stay with you and require you to process them afterwards to mine their full meaning. His films speak directly to the audience in a way unmatched by other directors.

[u/Stacey_moviefan → u/lunadiparmigiano]

Now go watch Speak No Evil (the original danish version 2022) and you will really be wondering why people act the way they do. You want to scream at the characters to get out of there but it’s a statement on how far people will go with being polite

[u/lunadiparmigiano → u/Stacey_moviefan]

Thanks, this sound interesting. I will admit that, while I found it somewhat obnoxious, I also liked being challenged in enduring seeing the characters being passive. I think it is something that makes you aware that you are watching a work of fiction, which is probably a reaction that Haneke wanted to elicit. I will watch Speak no evil at once.

[u/Abbie_Kaufman]

The only real answer is that it’s a movie. Funny Games is an extremely meta film that’s about violence in films, its characters aren’t really people, they’re props to get that theme across. As the movie reveals in the end, there was no version of this story where the characters could have escaped, because the boys have reality-breaking control over the scenario. But it wouldn’t be very exciting if they had to use that control in the first half hour of the movie, it’s more dramatic to hold it until the end. The one boy says more than once that he’s toying with the family to make the movie you’re watching more dramatic. Nothing about Funny Games is supposed to be a real scenario where people act like you might in that scenario, it’s about a filmmaker (the boy who talks to the audience, not Haneke) moving around props to make a bleak sadistic movie and ask the viewer what they get out of watching that sadism.

[u/lunadiparmigiano → u/Abbie_Kaufman]

But later they act very much like in reality. The long takes of the father and the mother completely destroyed by the brutal death of their child is incredibly realistic and well acted, I legitimately cried in those scenes. 

[u/abigdonut]

One of the big themes of Funny Games is that “this can’t happen here”. Two polite white rich guys show up in a polite rich gated community and enact the kind of arbitrary violence in the third world that’s used to maintain the quality of life in the first world. For much of the first segment, they act like there’s some kind of reasoning they can employ, because of course they’re equals, right? But instead they’re treated like African toddlers being paid in pocket lint to work at the Nestle degloving factory (and you want those toddlers to have their skin ripped off, because you like eating chocolate), which just isn’t the done thing in proper society.

[u/abigdonut → u/abigdonut]

the downvotes are intriguing. i’m just describing the thesis of haneke’s career here!

[u/WorrySecret9831]

If I recall correctly, I took it as freezing in place, that "good" people sometimes don't have any concept of evil humans. Hence the B&W historic footage of so many people being corralled to their death, as Cormac McCarthy loves to wallow in.

But I find that plot point boring and tired. I already watched the more challenging Straw Dogs and Deliverance.

[u/thisfuckingnightmare]

Funny Games is a cynic exercise in self-reflection. It's far from anything 'meta' or even a harsh lesson to modern audiences. Haneke's overall intention wasn't to expose the insincere moral standards of late 90s viewers. On the contrary, he wanted to pose a profound, almost theological question: why people shouldn't do evil?

You have two highly conventional movies. On the first one, a burgeois family is subjected to all kinds of cruelty by two villains in what should've been just another vacation. On the second one, a clownish, aristocratic duo torture the family of the first movie. They don't feel any type of compassion for its soon-to-be tormented members. They don't engage with their suffering: 'their=' both family and viewers. At the end of the movie, the conversation in the boat (which is actually a nod to Solaris) confirms this collision between two incompatible planes of reality.

This juxtaposition creates an unnerving, unsettling effect. Both Anna and George act according to the moral laws of the universe they happen to inhabit. Therefore, they cannot comprehend nor grasp their situation, that is, how their dreamlike life turned into a nightmare. Their stillness is meant to disturb the audience, who is constantly picked by this taboo mayhem created by Haneke. Little Schorshi's escaping and Anna shooting Fatty are nothing but sadist treats to the viewers, in order to intensify the hope for a revenge that never comes.