I just finished watching Benny's Video which is movie two of Michael Haneke's trilogy of disassociation in media violence. I haven't seen The Seventh Continent yet (the first in the trilogy and his debut film), but I did reluctantly devour Funny Games a few months ago and afterward felt as if part of me was lost and will never be regained. Benny's Video was disturbing, but not as effective and frightening as Funny Games which equates, in my opinion, with Last House on the Left as far as leaving the viewer with a lasting psychological impression of despair and anxiety. Though I never enjoy watching films like this, I am sensationally drawn to their affect on the viewer- the turning of one's stomach under the pressure of the image is incredible to me. I heavily recommend Haneke's films to those who seek sensational truth in cinema.
From Wikipedia's entry on Michael Haneke:
"My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus."
-- From "Film as catharsis".[2]
Rejecting what is considered to be standard conventions of timing, the build up of suspense and logical plotting, Haneke is not worried about inducing boredom, irritation and frustration. His films are considered to be very immediate without being simplistic. Arguably concerned with a society that no longer knows how to love—or for that matter how to hate—his films are in many ways an attempt to resharpen the audience's feelings and responses to the world.
Recurring themes include:
* the introduction of a malevolent force into comfortable bourgeois existence, as seen in Funny Games and Caché;
* a critique directed towards mass media, especially television, as seen in Funny Games, where some of the characters are aware that they feature in a movie, and Benny's Video.
* the inability or unwillingness to communicate directly from one person to another, or an unwillingness to involve oneself in the actions and decisions of others, even those in the same living conditions, as seen in Benny's Video, 71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls and Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages.
* characters named George and Anna (or some alternate version of those names)
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