Funny Games DVD




FUNNY GAMES


A Film by Michael Haneke

Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet + Devon Gear Heart

Released on DVD 28th July


The vacation begins with Anna, George and their son Georgie on their way to their summer home. The neighbours, Fred and Eva, are already there. They make a date to play golf the next morning. It’s a perfect day.

Anna begins to make dinner, while her husband and son are busy with the newly renovated sailboat. Suddenly, Anna finds herself face to face with a polite young man, the neighbours’ guest Peter, who has come to ask for some eggs because Eva has run out. Anna is about to give Peter the eggs, but hesitates. How did he get onto their property? Peter explains that there’s a hole in the fence – Fred showed it to him.

Things seem strange from the beginning. Soon, violence erupts. The thriller follows the rules of its genre, providing the deliverance that allows the audience to feel comfortable watching the film.

Michael Haneke began to explore his favorite subject, violence and the media, with the original 1997 film, Funny Games, and revisits it here with the same eye.

Haneke’s trilogy (The Seventh Continent – 1989; Benny’s Video – 1992; 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance – 1994), particularly Benny’s Video, exposes the consequences of the media’s portrayal of violence. Funny Games subverts the genre to allow audiences to observe that violence, and making them complicit by forcing them to see their own role through a series of emotional and analytical episodes.

In the belief that explanation would be reassuring, Haneke deliberately refuses to provide any.

“I’m trying to find ways to show violence as it really is: it is not something that you can swallow. I want to show the reality of violence, the pain, the wounding of another human being.”


R E M A K E Michael Haneke: “Recently a friend and critic who recently watched Funny Games US said to me "now the film is where it belongs." He is right. When I first envisioned Funny Games in the middle of the 90s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American Cinema, its violence, its naiveté, the way American Cinema toys with human beings. In many American films violence is made consumable.

However, because it was a foreign language film and because the actors were not familiar to a US audience, it did not reach its audience. In 2005, a British producer approached me with the idea to do a remake in English. I agreed under the condition that Naomi Watts star in the movie.”

Technical Specifications

DVD

Video Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic 1.85:1
Feature Length: 107 mins approx
Language: English
Disc Format PAL DVD 9
Region Code: 0

Blu-ray
Video Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Letterbox 1.85:1
Feature Length: 107 mins approx
Language: English
Disc Format 1080p Resolution / Dual Layer BD50