Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009

'Funny Games' takes the fun out of seeing bad things happen to others

By Ed Robertson, special to the Herald

After seeing Tim Roth whine his way through Reservoir Dogs (so you got shot in the stomach, walk it off already), it's always been a dream of mine to watch a two-hour movie about him getting tortured.

But like most dreams, it turned out the wanting was better than the having. 2007's English-language remake of Funny Games is a dark, distressing thriller, but its attempts at realism, grotesque as they are, don't make for very great fiction.

On a lakefront vacation, Roth and Naomi Watts are accosted by Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet. Hostages in their own home, the couple and their young son are forced to play a series of cruel games by their captors.

Meanwhile, director Michael Haneke is playing something of a game with us. Home invasion movies usually play on our anxieties, tweaking us with images of ordinary people suffering through graphic violence (the best kind of violence). Then we get to feel all safe and snuggly when the family righteously shoves the bad guy's hand into a sausage grinder.

Funny Games is not that kind of movie. Perversely, all its violence takes place just outside the frame, almost like it's daring us to be upset at not getting to see people getting brutalized. It's a lot like Lucy repeatedly yanking that football away from Charlie Brown, only instead of a football it's a shotgun blast to the face.

And with Roth crippled right off the bat, there isn't much chance for the good guys to fight back or do much of anything besides get driven slowly insane by Pitt and Corbet, who provide most of the movie's appeal. Quietly threatening, with affects so flat you could slide them under a closed door, the two playful young psychopaths are about as creepy as demented murderers come.

Good thing they've got so much screen time. Other than some interesting camera work, there isn't much entertainment to be had here. In some ways more of an experiment (or an outright accusation) than a movie, Funny Games makes a strong point, but ends up doggedly determined not to enjoy itself. Sure, in real life it might not be good times to be taken prisoner in your own home, thoroughly assaulted, and threatened with death, but since when weren't we allowed to have fun watching it happen to someone else?