Directed by:
Michael HanekeScreenplay:
Michael HanekeCinematography:
Jürgen JürgesCast:
Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering, Stefan Clapczynski, Doris Kunstmann, Wolfgang Glück, Christoph Bantzer, Susanne Meneghel (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
Michael Haneke’s most notorious provocation, Funny Games spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. In a series of escalating “games,” the sadistic duo subject their victims to unspeakable physical and psychological torture over the course of a night. A home-invasion thriller in which the genre’s threat of bloodshed is made stomach-churningly real, the film ratchets up shocks even as its executioners interrupt the action to address the audience, drawing queasy attention to the way that cinema milks pleasure from pain and stokes our appetite for atrocity. With this controversial treatise on violence and entertainment, Haneke issued a summation of his cinematic philosophy, implicating his audience in a spectacle of unbearable cruelty. (Criterion)
(more)Cast
Susanne Lothar
West Germany
Best movies:
The Reader (2008)
The White Ribbon (2009)
Agatha Christie: Poirot (1989) (series)
Ulrich Mühe
East Germany
Best movies:
The Lives of Others (2006)
The Woman and the Stranger (1985)
Das Buschgespenst (1986) (TV movie)
Arno Frisch
Austria
Best movies:
Funny Games (1997)
Benny's Video (1992)
Falco - Verdammt, wir leben noch! (2008)
Frank Giering
East Germany
Best movies:
Die Kirschenkönigin (2004) (series)
Funny Games (1997)
Gigantics (1999)
Stefan Clapczynski
Best movies:
Funny Games (1997)
Doris Kunstmann
German Empire
Best movies:
Funny Games (1997)
Joseph Balsamo (1973) (series)
Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)
Wolfgang Glück
Austria
Best movies:
Funny Games (1997)
Red Sun (1970)
Christoph Bantzer
German Empire
Best movies:
Funny Games (1997)
4 Kings (2015)
Tatort (1970) (series)
Susanne Meneghel
Best movies:
Funny Games (1997)
Monika Zallinger
Best movies:
Funny Games (1997)