Naomi Watts, Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet in Funny Games
Michael Haneke's Hollywood remake of his own 1997 German-language thriller about a suburban couple terrorised by a pair of youthful interlopers has received a mixed reception from the critics.
It's gone down particularly poorly in the US, and one can't help but feel that Haneke may have been caught up in the backlash against torture porn, a genre which in theory, his film condemns.
"Haneke's original was a coruscating critique of cinematic violence," writes Time Out's Wally Hammond. "This new version adds nothing novel, but it lacks none of the original's bite."
"Just as before, it's an icy ordeal of sadism, a macabre vivisectional experiment in pure cruelty, practised upon a bland upper-middle-class family," writes our own Peter Bradshaw. "And just as before, it caused my stomach muscles gradually to contract to about a sixth of their original volume. Repeat performance this may be, but its brilliance and technique and ingenuity are still in a different league from anything else around."
"Although the film's ideas remain as strong as they were first time around, Funny Games is probably too disorienting and disturbing to gain the word-of-mouth approval necessary for mainstream acceptance," writes the BBC's James Rocarols.
"Austrian writer/director Michael Haneke, who adapted this from his 1997 German-language film, has said it's a commentary on how violence is made consumable in American movies, swallowed easily by naive audiences," writes USA Today's Claudia Puig. "It's an interesting rationale, but what he puts on the screen feels much more exploitative than reflective. While Haneke is attacking our culture for being drawn to violent fare, he is also relishing in presenting it to us, in prolonged and detailed fashion."
Did you catch Funny Games at the weekend? And if so, did you make it to the end? Have you seen the original version? How do they compare, and was it worth Haneke doing the remake?
