3 Films de Michael Haneke

Throughout his career, Michael Haneke has demonstrated himself to be a provocative filmmaker prepared not only to tackle difficult and controversial subjects that challenge the viewer, but also willing to experiment with the form of cinema by refusing to conform to the demands and trickery of conventional filmmaking techniques, adopting a distanced, neutral approach on the part of the filmmaker’s assertions and pushing the onus of interpretation upon the viewer. These characteristics are already evident in the first three films Haneke made in Austria between 1989 and 1994 – a trilogy of films that reveal the cracks in modern society that push vulnerable individuals to commit unspeakable acts of violence.

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The Seventh Continent (1989)

Michael Haneke’s first feature film for theatrical release is a fully accomplished film that already displays many of the themes, techniques and shock values that would become very familiar in the director’s subsequent works. Following the lives of a seemingly normal middle-class family over three years, Haneke’s film sees the Schober family deliberately and methodically destroy all the trappings of the modern, consumerist society in a quite brutal and shocking manner.

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Benny’s Video (1992)

Michael Haneke’s second feature film is a natural follow-up to the disquieting portrait he depicted of the bourgeois family in The Seventh Continent. A young teenage boy, obsessed with horror videos and violent imagery, acts out and records on video a horrifying act of violence he has seen on the screen with a young girl he has just met, to the incomprehension of his mother and father.

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71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance (1994)

Following on from themes presented in his first two films, Michael Haneke’s 71 Fragments Of A Chronology of Chance widens his scope and view of society, while expanding and developing his filmmaking technique. The film again centres on an act of senseless violence, this time recounting the killing of three people in a Viennese bank, following the lives of a number of people who will ultimately become involved in the event through a series of fragmented scenes.

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All three films in the trilogy show Haneke experimenting with technique and refining his cinematic language to find the most truthful way of presenting events – not leading the viewer to accept a conventional structure where the film has a message and then manipulating scenes, characters and actions to meet those predefined expectations. Often scenes are left ambiguous, sometimes apparently irrelevant, but they should always leave the viewer room to make up their own mind and apply their own values – or even better, challenge them to actively question their own values and the expectations of what they are accustomed to simply blindly accepting.

It’s a risky technique which can often leave the viewer confused or feeling they have completely missed something in the narrative, and it’s not always successfully applied by the director either. Each of the three films here flirts with ambiguity and indirectness around a scene of shockingly senseless violence to varying degrees of success. Benny’s Video is perhaps a little too simplistic and direct in its correlation between on-screen violence and the actions of a desensitised youth who imitates what he sees. 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance goes in the opposite direction and presents long, banal, seemingly random actions which may or may not have any bearing on the central incident of the film. The Seventh Continent is perhaps is most successful at striking a balance in fitting its technique with the deeply disturbing and incomprehensible acts of violence that occur.

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DVD
The 3 Films de Michael Haneke boxset collecting these three films is released in France by G.C.T.H.V. A slipcased boxset, each of the DVDs is held in an individual thinpak case. Each of the films is presented on a dual-layer disc in PAL format and encoded for Region 2. None of the films or extra features contain English subtitles.

Video
All three films are newly transferred from almost flawless prints that show only a few infrequent and very minor white dustspots. Each of the films is presented anamorphically at a 1.78:1 ratio which, depending on the original ratio of the films, may not involve much cropping of the image. Benny’s Video however, to judge from the deleted scenes shown in the extra features, appears to be shot at a 1.66:1 ratio. This doesn’t seem to cause many complications with the framing of the films, but it is almost certainly not how they were originally envisioned. Each of the films intentionally has a very dull, cool colour scheme, which is generally well represented on each DVD, with perhaps The Seventh Continent looking the clearest. All of the films show fine stability in the transfers with no signs of any kind of artefacts.

Audio
The original German mono audio track on each film is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and is strong and clear with only some minor background noise being audible on Benny’s Video.

Subtitles
There are no English subtitles on any of the films or extra features. Optional French subtitles are all that is included here. The interviews on each disc are conducted in French without English subtitles.

Extras
Each DVD contains an interview with Michael Haneke conducted by Serge Toubiana, where the director gives his thoughts on each of the film, what instigated them, what he was trying to achieve and the techniques he employs. The interview on 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance is slightly extended to take in the trilogy as a whole and Haneke’s general thoughts on his filmmaking processes. None of these interviews contain subtitles, but I have tried to cover their content in the individual reviews of each of the films. Benny’s Video additionally contains about 10 minutes of Deleted Scenes (14:05), presented and commentated on by the director, who shows them via monitor to Serge Toubiana. There is little of interest here – Haneke confirms that his films are tightly scripted, leaving little room for additional material – and what is presented consists mostly of further home video footage shot by Benny on holiday in Egypt. Toubiana demonstrates the pointlessness of trying to probe the director on underlying subtexts by asking his about the significance of this part of the film. “They’re running away”, replies Haneke. Quite.

Overall
Michael Haneke’s films present a deeply disquieting view of society and the actions of individuals struggling to comprehend the contradictions of modern living, unable to communicate their sense of isolation other than through expressions of extreme violence. But there is more than just misery depicted in the seemingly bleak situations of this trilogy of films. Just as much of the violence takes on greater force by being shown indirectly and often off-screen, so too beauty is alluded to but not directly shown since, according to Haneke, any attempt to show it will render it false. The truth and meaning of these films therefore lies in the reaction that they provoke in the viewer. This may not make the films any easier to view or objectively evaluate, but it means that they remain endlessly and grimly fascinating. Despite the flaw in the aspect ratios, the French DVD edition of the films is a wonderful opportunity to view these films which are currently unreleased on DVD anywhere else and hear the director's always interesting views on filmmaking, but only if you speak German or French.