Austrian Night

Funny Games (1997), Michael Haneke's most provocative film, turns the thumbscrews sadistically slowly. In his home invasion thriller, a typical family are taken hostage in their holiday home by two young men wearing white gloves. In ever more terrifying 'games', they submit their victims to a long night of physical and psychological torture.

Haneke turns up the bloodletting until the moment when the torturers interrupt the action to address the audience directly. Passing the spectacle of cruelty, like a razor-sharp boomerang, back to the audience in their comfy seats. Funny Games is also a brain-stretching exercise in film philosophy on violence as entertainment, full of discomfort and derangement, not unlike the work of Haneke’s compatriot Ulrich Seidl, to whom Eye is dedicating an exhibition.

Ahead of the screening, Koolhoven & Simons will spend an hour discussing clips from films including Angst (1983), Goodnight Mommy (2014) and other works by Michael Haneke.

Funny Games screens on 35mm (from the Eye collection).