I've just had one of those weird moments when you watch a film and th
I've just had one of those weird moments when you watch a film and think one thing and yet the critical consensus is almost the opposite. I watched the US Version of Funny Games. I've not seen the original Austrian version, but knew beforehand that they were more or less identical. Except for this fact, gleaned from an interview, I knew very little about the movie. My initial response to the film was horror and emotional turmoil. I felt absolutely and desperately sorry for the protagonists, the family who are tortured by the Leopold and Loeb characters, and on an intellectual level i realised that this was a film about films, specifically those family in peril films, where the liberal patriarch is tormented and pushed until he foresakes his timidity and rediscovers his masculine capacity for violence. Usually these films star Harrison Ford (Firewall, Air Force One), or perhaps Mel Gibson (Ransom). The archtypes could be Cape Fear, or Desperate Hours.
The point is all of these films have an initial section of helplessness and terror, which is then reassuringly overtaken by a wish fulfilling descent into redemptive violence. Funny Games points to this possibility but disappoints it.
Now here's my point. After watching the movie I read a whole series of reviews which hated the movie, but it was astonishing how they hated the movie. Apparently because the family were marked clearly as upper middle class, then they were being presented as being punished for this. The expensive dog food they have bought is cited in one review as a mitigating circumstance.
Tim Roth's character was characterised in several reviews as wimpish (as if the film would have been a better film is he had punched Peter rather than slapped him). The film is regarded as sadistic and manipulative, whereas i watched it as a critique of the falsifying and manipulative cosy horror of standard Hollywood narrative.
I wondered if anyone in the salon had any strong feelings either way about the film, because I'd like to hear them.
*
*
Film-Philosophy salon
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to.
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html
For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon.
*
Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com
Contact: [log in to unmask]
**
|