"Funny Games U.S."



There might be a couple of little spoilers ahead.

Eleven years or so ago, when we used to go to the cinema together a lot, I took Jennifer to see the original Austrian version of "Funny Games U.S." at the Broadway cinema in Nottingham. Before she agreed to go she asked me what "Funny Games" was about. I told her "Funny Games" was a foreign thriller concerning a nice, affluent, middle class couple, with a pre-teen son, who are taken hostage in their house by a pair of psychopaths. That was everything I could crib from the reviews of "Funny Games" I had read at the time. Jennifer was game, so off we went.

A couple of hours later, emerging shell shocked and ashen faced from the cinema, Jennifer turned to me and this is what she said.

"If you EVER" (big emphasis on the word EVER, here guys) "take me to see a film like that again, we won't be going out together anymore. Got that?"

Er... OK, I said, cowering in the gutter.

Last weekend Jennifer chose not to come to see "Funny Games U.S.". Probably just as well.

A comparison between "Funny Games" and "Funny Games U.S." would be pretty futile, because they are practically the same movie. Word for word, scene for scene and shot for shot, but what a brilliant, shocking, gruelling and uncompromising piece of work it still is.

I loved "Funny Games U.S." for exactly the same reasons that I loved the original. The unbroken ratcheting up of the tension and unexpected lack of release. The subverting of the very language of cinema. (Blatant acknowledgement of the "fourth wall" and, hey!, if you don't like the way a scene is going, why not just rewind and start again?) The way that the worst of the violence is just slightly off screen. What did you see? What did they do? It's an old trick, but it is still very effective.

As for the ending? Almost written as an afterthought. Indifferent, unimportant and devastating.

Frankly I feared what might happen to "Funny Games U.S." in the hands of Hollywoodian style producers and actors, even with Michael Haneke still in the Director's chair, but I needn't have worried. There are astonishing performances by everybody in the cast, but no better than the performances of Michael Pitt as a twinkly eyed charming lunatic, and Naomi Watts, digging deep into reserves of hysterical emotion and appearing to really suffer.

"Funny Games U.S." does lose out slightly to the original, but only because it is practically the same movie as the one I saw in 1997 and so I knew exactly where the plot was going, but it is still an astonishing piece of work.

Much recommended, but do not go to see if you are expecting a generic family-in-peril thriller.