Home Cinema: Michael Haneke

Films about cruelty and love - “Funny Games”, “Pianist”, “White Ribbon” and others

Every weekend in the “Home Cinema” section on “Medusa”, recommendations are released for everyone who wants to study the history of the cinema. In this issue, film critic Anton Dolin talks about one of the most famous European directors, the owner of the Oscar and two “gold palm branches” - Michael Hanek.

Seventh continent

1989

The pride of Austrian cinema, a native of Munich, Michael Hanek, went a long way before he debuted in a “large” rolling cinema at the age of 47. Before that, he managed a lot: he studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Vienna, where many years later he began to teach, tried himself as a musician, playwright and film critic, shot several more or less successful paintings on television (seven works in ten years). Perhaps that is why the Seventh Continent, formally, the first Haneke film, makes such a deafening impression, striking the maturity of reflection, the design of form, the originality of the language and emotional power. The picture participated in the competition of the festival in Locarno and received the Bronze Leopard.

The plot was born at the Haneke after reading the news note, the plot of which was more or less accurately transmitted in the film. The director from the first picture is closely attached to the criminal chronicle and the newspaper agenda; A few years later, he completely built his minute picture for the lumber and company almanac and the company. In the center of the Seventh Continent is an ordinary Austrian family: mom, dad, daughter. Their life is prosperous and arranged, devoid of bright events. The bourgeois routine does not portend any cataclysms. Moreover, an unpredictable ending looks shocking in its everyday catastrophic.

You can consider this tragic tape as a parable about the dead end of comfort, as criticism of modern Europe, or to see in it a metaphysical study of attraction to death and non -being. One way or another, the director avoids rhetoric and concentrates on the image-imaginary-statical and deceptively neutral. With a laugh, the author told how scared journalists asked him at a press conference whether life in Austria was really so unbearable; Of course, the action of the “seventh continent” could also unfold in any other country - for example, in the “Antipode” of Austria, where the family of heroes, Australia is going to leave. The author also noticed that the scene of money destroying money is the most shocking for the viewer - this spectacle seems more unbearable than any torment or death.

For the first time, his “constant” characters appear here - a man named George and a woman named Anna (such names are the majority of Haniek heroes). The director’s subtle musical taste is obvious: Alban Berg’s music, the filament from the Austrian decadence of the beginning of the century to the devastation that overtaken Europeans in the finale of the same century sounds, is obvious. It is generally accepted that the “seventh continent” is the first part of the informal “Austrian” trilogy, which also included “Benny Video” (1992) and “71 fragment of chronology of accidents” (1994).

Funny games

1997

The scandalously famous picture, presented in the competition of the Cannes festival with a special warning for especially nervous and sensitive spectators, predictably divided the audience and critics into two camps. The third of the hall at the premiere could not sit until the end of the session. For the Haneke, there is a kind of manifesto, a conceptual answer to Tarantino and Rodriguez, a fashion for “comic violence” and postmodern ethics.

The Austrian family - the husband of Georg, the wife of Anna, their son and dog - come to rest in the summer house on the lake. Two young strangers knock on the door. It soon turns out that their intention is sadistic to torture and ultimately kill all three family members. Attempts by confused victims to escape or at least understand the motives of the killers do not lead to anything. At the same time, one of the two aliens constantly conducts his own dialogue with the audience of the film, breaking the “Fourth Wall”, and even concludes a bet with them - will George and live until dawn? On the one hand, “funny games” are painfully detailed, psychologically detailed and very believable in each nuance, which contradicts the generally accepted conventions of the “horror” genre, which is taken here as a formal basis. On the other hand, Hankee deliberately draws the viewer’s attention to the fact that he is used to enjoying the torture and murders of fictional characters, and offers to rethink the consumer attitude to the “comfortable” image of violence on the screen.

A radical artistic gesture and declarative unbearable cinema, “Funny Games” for a long time became the hallmark of not only the director, but also many of his actors, especially Ulrich Mue (he played in two more paintings by Hanek, and then in the sensible “life of others”) and his wife Suzanne Lotar (also shot in other tapes of Hanek and later in the “reader”), which are both tragic) They passed away early, as well as Arno Frisha, an open hainke in “Benny Video”. Jurgen Yurges, who took up another experimental project - “Dau” Ilya Khrzhanovsky, shot “Funny Games” for many years later. Ten years later, Hanek continued the fate of “Fun games”, having removed the extremely accurate English -speaking Rome in the United States in similar decorations - only with another operator, Darius Khongji, and other actors, Tim Roth, Naomi Watts and Michael Pitt, in the main roles.

Pianist

2001

Having removed his last television movie after the “Funny Games” - the scrupulous film adaptation of the “castle” of Franz Kafka with Ulrich MUE in the title role - Hankee in protest against the election of right -handed Jorg Haider in the 1999 elections begins to make films outside Austria. In 2000, the “code is unknown”, a fragmentary chronicle of Parisian life with Jules Binosh in one of the main roles, was released in France. And in 2001, the director overtakes the first festival triumph. “Pianist”-a drama with French actors in French, but according to the novel of the same name by the modern classic of Austrian literature, Elfrida Elinek, receives Grand Prix in Cannes and two small acting “palm trees”, for Isabelle Juppper and Benois Maymiel.

The 40-year-old professor of the Vienna Conservatory Eric is a strict arrogant woman living together with an elderly mother. Her secret passion is porno-cinema, she is excited by fetishism and sadomasochism, which no person knows about. But once Erica meets with a student Walter-an amateur musician who shares her passion for Schubert and seems to be ready to accept her any. The pianist decides to go to the V-Bank, for the first time in his life revealing someone his secret.

At the same time, an uncompromising lavstory and a hopeless study of the unsatisfactory need for love, the “pianist” is a surgically verified sight, the author of which carefully doses emotions and thus achieves the maximum effect. Having transferred the innovative prose of Elinek to the screen, which will receive the Nobel Prize in literature in three years, Haneke finds accurate wordless equivalents for its text, built on modernist formal technology. But first of all, the “pianist” is an acting Everest, the best role in the career Isabelle Jupper, one of the most outstanding and diverse European actresses. Once she was afraid to play in the “Funny Games” by the Haneke, which she subsequently regretted, and now compensated for the omission with more than. No less admiration is deserved by Benoit Mamymel and the Great Annie Girardo, who with an unforgettable expression played the role of Erica's mother. Later, Hanek again took off Girardo in the “hidden”, and with Jupper worked more than once, in “Time of Volkov”, “Lyubov” and “Happy end”.

White tape

2009

After the “pianists”, Hankee becomes one of the most influential European directors. The unwilling status is fixed by the minimalist post -apocalyptic “wolf time” and “hidden”, a terrible intellectual psychotriller with Daniel Otoim and Jules Binosh (a prize for directing in Cannes). An attempt to win the American audience with the Romean of Fun Games is unsuccessful. Then Hanek returns to his native continent-more precisely, to Bavaria, where he was once born. There he shoots a film that many will call him the highest achievement, the “White Tape”. This chamber and at the same time global drama, the time of the action of which is moved to Germany before the First World War, will receive a “gold palm branch”. The president of the Cannes jury was Isabelle Jupper that year, but no one turned her tongue to blame her for bias - the leadership of the Hankee was too obvious.

The subtitle of the "White Ribbon" - "History of children of Germany." The action takes place in rural areas and a small town around the estate of the local baron. In the center of the plot, teenagers who have not yet passed the first participle. Together with the narrator, a young school teacher, we are trying to find out and understand the cause of several incidents during which local residents were injured, among them a boy with cognitive impairment. Slowly and thoroughly Hanek immerses the viewer in the measured life of God -fearing farmers and only hints at what is happening behind closed doors of their houses. The director prefers to avoid shock effects, leaving the worst behind the scenes, and chooses the figures of the silence, so to the end and without revealing the background of what is happening. Nevertheless, it is gradually clear that children are the root cause of all tragedies, at the same time victims and criminals, and their involuntary accomplices are parents practicing grandfather educational methods.

By and large, in this pure, strict, complex, but transparent picture, Haneke shows the genesis of fascism, which will blossom in the same parts after a couple of decades. Exploring their constant topics-violence, repressed feelings, unclaimed and loneliness, as well as collective responsibility-Haneke reaches the greatest expressiveness, reducing the artistic means to a minimum (this is his first black and white movie). The main source of inspiration for the director and his permanent operator Christian Berger was the monumental cycle of portrait photographs of August Zander, who intended to capture all of Germany in his pictures and thus creating a unique visual panorama of pre -war Europe.

Love

2012

The first and only case in the practice of the Cannes festival - the director receives the second “Golden Palm Branch” for the second film in a row. And then the Golden Globe and Oscar. But the stunning triumph of "love" is not surprising. In addition, this newly removed in France has a modern chamber drama almost nothing in common with the stylized historical fresco of the White Ribbon.

With this film, Hanek seems to object to his critics, who often accused him of insensibility, prudence, apologetics “dislike”. The noble restraint of his picture does not contradict its sensual nature, and the external straightness of the intrigue makes the depth of “love” only more obvious. In the center of intrigue, two old people named (of course) Georges and Anna. They are former music teachers, have long retired, the children grew up; The couple lives peacefully in a spacious Parisian apartment. Once Anna is experiencing a stroke, the result of which partial paralysis becomes. Her condition is slowly worsening. Georges takes care of her himself, waiting for the inevitable end. By this, the plot of "love" is generally exhausted. Knowing that the great love stories require overcoming obstacles, Hankee puts on the way of his heroes an invincible opponent - old age and death. Nevertheless, their struggle for each other and for their own dignity turns the film into one of the highest achievements of European culture of the 21st century, and some scenes - with a wheelchair or with a pigeon flying into an apartment - are worthy of entering the textbook.

The role of Georges was played by the 82-year-old star of “Confordist” and “Men and Women” by Jean-Louis Trentignan, the role of Anna is 85-year-old Emmanuel Riva, the famous role in “Hiroshima, my love”; Thus, both became famous for the roles of "heroes-lover" in the cult films of the past. In other roles - Isabelle Jupper, who played the daughter of an elderly couple, pianist Alexander Taro and singer William Shimell. The operator of the film was Darius Kongi. Behind the scenes, the piano music of the beloved composer Haneke - Franz Schubert sounds.

Five years later, Hannek presented in Cannes a caustic social comedy “Happy End”, one of the characters of which, Grandfather Georges, was played by Jean-Louis Trentinyan. Its line in the film is a kind of sequel or Ommage "Love." Emmanuel Riva had already passed away by that time.

Anton Dolin