Michael Haneke

jwd

Well-known member
Saw Haneke's 'Code Inconnu' ('Code Unknown') last night - brilliant film - can anyone recommend other films worth seeing by this director? I know of 'The Piano Teacher', and there's a short Haneke series going on at the local cinema I'll be checking out, but any words, advice, thoughts...
 

Melmoth

Bruxist
Time of the Wolf is one of the most powerful, viscerally moving films I have ever seen, absolutely crawling with post-apocalyptic dread. Its like Stalker minus the mysticism, though with traces still of that movie's immense tenderness. The closing moments especially are astonishing. Better than either Code Unknown (which I liked a lot) and The Piano Teacher (which I hated).
 
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Funny Games

'Time of the Wolf' is a great apocalypse movie, more emotionally charged than 'Code Unknown' but not better. Try out 'Funny Games,' Hanke takes a familar family kidnapped by some psychos scenario and turns in a surreal treatise of cinema violence, representation and the boundaries of reality, which i guess are the same themes he kicks in the head in 'Code Unknown'.
 

henrymiller

Well-known member
yeah, sharing the love for 'code' and 'wolf' but WHAT IS UP with 'the piano teacher'? i walked out. i would love to see his kafka film.
 
Walking out on The Piano Teacher

I saw 'Code Unknown' after 'Piano Teacher' in a double bill at the curzon soho, and yeah its a gruelling piece of cinema, but walking out... nah mate. Then again, the scene in the bathtub, where the teacher cuts herself up... BRUTAL. I did walk out of 'Wonderland'with Val Kilmer but that was a press screening and it was utter crapola.

Can't wait to see Hanke's new film, i think its screening at Cannes, hopefully it'll make its way here soon...
 

jed_

Well-known member
"Code Unknown" is his Masterpiece IMO followed by "Funny Games" - one of the only true intellectuals working in film now.
 

puretokyo

Mercury Blues
jed_ said:
one of the only true intellectuals working in film now.

i would consider that a derogatory comment. certainly not one i would apply to one of my favourite directors, such as haneke.
 

cozen

Active member
I have seen a lot of his films, for some reason or other.

"the seventh continent" > "code inconnu" / "the time of the wolf" / "the piano teacher" > "funny games" > "71 fragments of a chronology of chance"

though I think that second tier represents his best work, a kind of trilogy of genius, "the seventh continent" is his masterpiece, in the original meaning of the word, and I don't think I could sit through it all the way, without forcing myself to do so.

obsessed with power, like any true french man, his power scheme is ultimately a bit silly.

I once got into an argument with a film student at a party (I say argument when I mean I wasn't listening to him and he wasn't listening to me) who said haneke is bourgeois when I believe he is anything but. he was silly, I was silly, we were both silly, but I stand by my claim.

why don't you like "the piano teacher", henry?
 

cozen

Active member
let me try again:

like a lot of french men, he is sessed with power and the way it works and flows but his scheme of power and insertion (more pressure based top-down nonsense than a nice bit of subtle, arterial foucauldian numminess) (uh sorry whut?) is ultimately a bit silly...
 

jed_

Well-known member
calling someone an intellectual is derogatory now? sheesh. i'm pretty sure he approaches his films from an intellectual angle almost every time.
 

henrymiller

Well-known member
i don't know why i didn'ty like 'the piano teacher', it was a long time ago, but i think it involved:

-the french-austrian language/euro-pudding angle
-the echt euro-cinema perspective on sexuality. maybe it would be okay if it was the only art-house hit to 'explore the darker side' of the 's&m roots' off sexuality, but it's one of many.
-maybe it's okay as auto-critique, ie he is a very 'controlled' artist. but ironically i didn't think it had the pure formal discipline of 'code unknown'.
-i am psyched about his new one.
-ii would really like to see the earlier, funnier ones.
 

nonseq

Well-known member
I've only seen La Pianiste. I do not subscribe to the rampant negativism towards human nature that seems to be typical of Haneke (or so I read), so I saw her more as an extreme, isolated case. To me, La Pianiste is a shocking masterpiece about a woman who sacrificed too much for her art. Art without life is art without inspiration, a perversion.
 

cozen

Active member
haneke is a french filmmaker.

I don't really think she sacrificed much for art, so much as she sacrificed lots for her mother.
 

nonseq

Well-known member
From imdb.com:

Michael Haneke

Date of birth (location)
23 March 1942
Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Besides working on his various movie projects, he also works as a professor for directing at the Vienna Film Academy.

He started his career as a playwright for the Südwestfunk (ARD) in 1967 and started working as a freelance director for TV and theater in 1970.

He was raised in the city of Wiener Neustadt, Austria and later studied psychology, philosophy and theatrical sciences at the University of Vienna, Austria.

The son of director and actor Fritz Haneke and actress Beatrix von Degenschild.
 

nonseq

Well-known member
Tbh I have never heard/read him being called a French filmmaker. Here are some more quotes:

Michael Haneke is with good certainty both Austria's most esteemed and most controversial active filmmaker.

[…]

we can broadly divide Haneke's career in two: (i) his initial feature films in the period 1988–1997, devastating critiques of Austrian society, funded predominantly by public Austrian funds, and (ii) his last three efforts, investigations of broader European problems, financed in coproductions with largely French monies, starring high-profile French actors.

[…]

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/haneke.html

AUSTRIA

Michael Haneke interviewed

[…]

If we can return to music, it seems in La Pianiste that classical music, while embodying the best sensibility of Erika, is also implicated in her pathology.

Yes, you can see the music functioning in that way, but you need first to understand that in that film we are seeing a very Austrian situation.

[…]

I notice that your recent films are in French, although the setting remains Austrian.

This is to accommodate the producers and actors. My principal source of support has come from France, and my casts have been largely French. Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche, Benoit Magimel, Annie Girardot... they are wonderful. Austria's film industry is a bit more limited in resources. The French production industry has been very helpful to me, and I am very comfortable with the language.

http://www.kinoeye.org/04/01/interview01.php
 
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cozen

Active member
sorry I was being a fanny.

I still believe he is a french filmmaker but I'm too flippant to go into why right now.
 

version

Well-known member
Watched Happy End on iPlayer last night. Not his best, but it had its moments. Reminded me of the way people discuss late-period DeLillo. Very sparse and vague, lots of information left out or implied rather than shown and verging on self-parody. The karaoke scene reminded me of Denis Lavant dancing to Rhythm of the Night at the end of Beau Travail.


 
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