10 years, two terrible games

Mariela 2021-12-31 08:02:31

"Funny Game" is probably one of the most chilling movies ever. When it was competing for Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, public opinion was in an uproar. Many film critics stood up angrily before the film was screened. Shows a horrific and violent protest against the film-two teenagers broke into a country house and brutally murdered a family of three for no reason. Their words and deeds, just like the title, regarded everything as a "fun" According to them, the killing of the door was actually triggered by a box of eggs and the victim’s "impoliteness".

The film does not show off blood, but is full of Hitchcock-style suspense - you can't predict what these two boys who seemed shy and polite at first will do, except that they are suspiciously wearing white gloves on their hands. Those stupid freshmen are no different. If the two college students in Hitchcock's "Imperial Soul" murdered to challenge mediocrity, then we have no motive for these two. We don’t even know where they come from, whose children they are, and what they do to prove or promote.

Killing without reason is the most terrible. Audiences who are accustomed to causal logic will feel that they have been squeezed by both unreasonable and immoral, and their inner tension and pain cannot be released. Director Michael Haneke made one of the teenagers wink and speak directly to the audience like a documentary, and also came up with a magical technique of the teenager using a remote control to control the plot, which further aggravated the audience and the three victims. He was teased and humiliated, and quickly came to the conclusion that "this director is a bastard". The scary thing is that on the screen, this tragedy happened twice.

Except that Naomi Watts is more exposed than the original heroine, the big brick mobile phone has become a thin and light flip phone. The 2007 American version of "Funny Game" almost "copy" the original 1997 version. The same cold and ruthless. The explanation given by the white-bearded director Michael Haneke is "In the past 10 years, everything has been business as usual, so I can't think of anything to add or change."

Treating torture as a game, pushing a tightly bound person into the lake and showing the brightest smile, not only happened in these two "funny games". Last year, the murder of a woman by four boys and girls with an average age of less than 18 in Beijing also caused an uproar. According to reports, "In the early morning of May 21, 2006, near South Xinhua Street in Xuanwu District, four people found Ms. Ding, a strange woman sheltering from the rain, pretending to be frolicking and approaching Ms. Ding. One of the girls collided with Ms. Ding several times. Ms. Ding After making accusations, the four teenagers took Ms. Ding into a nearby demolished house, beaten her whole body with sticks, stripped her clothes, burned her cigarette butt, burned her hair and lower body, etc., and killed Ms. Ding and snatched her with him. 112 yuan and a small smart phone. "Before, four people also beat an old lady with mental retardation and two scavengers. In the trial, the four people respectively explained that the beating and torture were “just boring, for fun”, “doing nothing to spare, but also for pleasure”, “just when they were beating, seeing the other party’s painful look makes my heart happy.”

As early as 1997, Haneke declared that if "Funny Game" was a big success, it would show that the audience had misunderstood his original intention. Fortunately, the two "Funny Games" have fulfilled his wishes. The 1997 version did not win Palme d'Or. At the request of the producer, the 2007 version of the box office, which invited the star to be remade, still failed. No matter what his original intention is, I hope he can be happy with these two results.

Finally, as for the question of whether both versions are worth watching, it depends on which version you can see first, and you don’t need to look at the other after reading one, because in terms of content, they are really almost identical.

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Extended Reading

Funny Games quotes

  • [first lines]

    [subtitled version]

    Anna: Björling... Suliotis?

    Georg: Almost. Björling is easy.

  • [subtitled version]

    Paul: A, B, BOO, and out go you. You're not leaving at this stage. First you have to say your age.