10/21/10 (Funny Games review, essentially)

Funny Games is, essentially, a bloody brilliant movie. A long, drawn-out list of adjectives to describe it are: clever, subtle, demented, twisted, twisting, simply confusing (not SIMPLY confusing but confusing in a simple manner,) surprising. To begin with, the opening scene is just to capture the attention of the audience (namely teens who think they're better, and families who think they're brave.) Switching suddenly and brutally from classical to screamo music, one could almost jump. In this opening scene was an example of some interesting camerawork, the camera being fixed to some focus point of attention rather than the character speaking in the scene. This is not only just some experimental point-of-view playing but also a way to fit in voice-overs seamlessly. It happens several time during the film, the focus being somewhere other than the face of the speaker. Now THAT was just a little thing I noticed. The movie plays with the human conscience, demanding sympathy for the family but identity with the killers. The scene where they left made me just critically anticipating when they would get back and finish their bet. During that scene, I found it funny how the family would try to busy themselves with trivial tasks like drying their cell phone with a hairdryer or putting a blanket over their dead kid. THIS also surprised me, the order in which they killed all of the members of the family. The cliche wouldn't be to kill the little kid first, but save him so that the audience still had this little teddy bear to look after. The movie is also ripe with foreshadowing, the most prominent one being the connection between the game of golf hinted at in the start and the games the boys play with the family. "Funny Games." And they sure were funny. I found myself laughing at their wit, agonizing politeness, and easily-provoked retaliation. I mean the man slaps you in the face, you break his leg with a golf club. Makes sense in a way. they planned things out well enough to entertain both themselves and the people behind the fourth wall (which they broke repeatedly) but still succeed in winning their bet. The analogy I can best use is the killers being magneto, the family being teenagers, and the movie being a metal chess set. And they still played the game. More little things I noticed were the verbal and physical symbology, physical being the golf ball, eggs, and knife and the main verbal one being "don't fall asleep". "Don't fall asleep" is somewhat ironic, the movie having several unnecessarily long scenes in which almost nothing is developed. But the audience is encouraged not to sleep, because even a blink and they might miss something (like the killing of the wife,) which happens in less than a second. The facial expressions and body positions are exactly the same before and after the murder. And the scene in which the boy was murdered was quick too, however slightly anticipated. The man enters the kitchen, gets food, and gunshots and screams are heard. Playing with the emotions and expectations of the audience, they are left to wonder who it was that was killed first. Now I feel this blog has been long enough, seeing as how it is unlikely to be read by ANYONE, but I'd like to touch on my favorite scene, the one with the remote. Funny and out-of-place, this scene is actually ripe with foreshadowing, being somewhat revealed after the gun was fired in the form of a rewind. The 2 things I noticed the killer saying that I found extremely clever were "now that the we've done the trial run" and "say it backwards." the trial run referring to the first time they went through that scene, and backwards referring to the rewind. BLOODY. FUCKING. BRILLIANT.