Monday, 03.17.08
Horton Trumps Haneke
Photo Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Truth and consequences
May 1998
Movies in America: After fifty years
November 1947
Over sixty years ago, Budd Schulberg assessed the state and history of American cinema.
Cloverfield as social criticism
January 2008
Hollywood released two reimaginings of old stories this weekend. Horton Hears a Who! earned surprising critical praise, with most reviewers joining the New York Times's A. O. Scott in judging it a dramatic improvement on recent live-action Seuss adaptations like The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. (This was perhaps a low bar to clear, given that the earlier adaptations were -- as Scott put it -- among "the worst movies ever made.")
The magnitude of Horton's success was matched by the critical and commercial failure of Austrian auteur Michael Haneke's English-language debut, a shot-by-shot remake of his own 1997 film Funny Games. Haneke's story -- about a vacationing family senselessly tortured by two young sociopaths -- is designed to torment its audience into submitting to its didactic message: American moviegoers are complicit in an excessively violent culture. But what was original in 1997 is a dated deconstruction of genre conventions today. The first Funny Games was released before Columbine, 9/11, and the explosion of user-generated content on the Internet. In an era when even "torture porn" movies adopt the cinematic techniques employed to critique them -- dramatic asides, extra-diegetic disruptions -- Haneke's original film demanded updating. In choosing a shot-for-shot remake instead, he neglected to follow Alfred Hitchcock's rule for remakes -- that they must improve on the original, rather than recapitulate it.
Blame the dog!The New Yorker's Anthony Lane suggests that vacationers wishing to avoid sadistic trespassers should select their family dogs wisely. |
Success on its own meritsInvoking Duchamp's conceptual work, Andrew O'Hehir finds Funny Games a "chilly intellectual [exercise] masquerading as a drama," and successful as such. |
Righteous remakesStuart McDougal assesses Alfred Hitchcock's frequently laudatory fits of cinematic self-improvement. |
Lazy filmmaking?Haneke's remake exhibits smug laziness above all else, says Michael Koresky. |
Haneke on HanekeIn 2005, director Michael Haneke discusses his original Funny Games, the then-upcoming remake, and the film's intended message. |
