I have seen some wonderful films recently such as "Three Billboards....", "The Shape of Water" etc that I really enjoyed. Then you see a film by a master like Haneke and suddenly you are transported to a whole new level of film making. This is a film that intellectually and visually provides a commentary on the state of the world at the moment. Haneke is a sort of Noam Chomsky for the eyes but as the supreme moral chronicler his world view has a satisfyingly more muscular and biting edge to it. Indeed Haneke operates on an intellectual and moral level that very few filmmakers have ever approached. Only a handful of films such as Godard's "Weekend" ( although Godard can never escape a blatant didacticism, or a frequent obsession with his leading ladies), Greenaway's "The Cook, the Thief His Wife and Her Lover" and Bunuel's "the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" provide such a pleasure for the senses and the brain as Haneke's work does..
The film launches you into the various machinations of a construction company owning upper middle class family. Sexualised internet messages from people having affairs, phone camera's voyeuristically recording someone's mother as she passes from intimate daily routines through to the anonymous and almost impersonalised death throes of the character. These moments are designed to actively engage your brain right from the outset as you start to try and construct the narrative gaps. However they also serve, mirroring Haneke's 1992 film "Benny's Video", to show the distancing effect of technology on real human interaction and the almost sociopathic impact that this technology has on people's minds.
The film places us at the centre of a successful, cultured and beautiful family headed by a grandfather sinking towards dementia, brilliantly played by Jean Louis Trintignant who at 87 may have delivered here his greatest performance since the "Conformist". As we move behind this facade we see a son, played by Mathieu Kassovitz , who is a care giving doctor in his daily life but someone who does not know how to love or give genuine care to his own family, a man who is at his most alive typing out his sexual fantasies on facebook messenger. There is an austere daughter, played by the greatest screen actress of her generation Isabelle Huppert, who is the cold steel holding the family construction business together. There is the troubled grandson, Huppert's son, played by Franz Rogowski, physically imperfect and hence doomed to failure. Then there is the sweet looking granddaughter, brilliantly played Fantine Harduin, who delivers an astonishing performance for a 12 year old, who has been so tainted by this dysfunctional family and by the her constant reliance upon a version of life that is one step removed from reality by her phone video camera that she can barely grasp the fundamental morals of reality. Yet tragically all that she wants is to be loved and to belong.
There are the house servants of North African origin and the mongrel family dog, always filmed from the outside looking in and reduced to taking it's frustration out on the lowest ranking member of the household, the cooks daughter. Perhaps representing a world where the disenfranchised have their hatred misdirected to other struggling people rather than focussing upon those who are really responsible for their difficulties.
This is a living breathing world trapped inside the problems of the current day. Where migrants are forced to leave their homes, not for economic reasons but because their family members have been burnt alive by fundamentalist Muslims, Muslim extremists funded by Trump's fossil fuel buddies the Saudi Arabians and subtly referenced by the oil rigs shown in the film. A time and place where the simple physical presence of these dark skinned people at a gleaming white wedding serves to show the profound contrast in these people's lives. A world where Brexit is serving to disrupt the relationship between England and France (hence the inclusion of the English speaking character played by Toby Jones). A world where everything is contractual and where an ordinary working man's life is worth 35,000 Euro's and the compensation for a dog bite on a North African child is the remnants of a box of chocolates.
A brilliantly crafted film where every second seems to be perfectly judged, from intimate interiors to a terrific exterior tracking shot of the suicidal family patriarch, but keeping us as distanced observers, inviting us to actually THINK not consume. A film where every interior, every wardrobe choice seems to be casually perfect. Inside this coruscating study of an upper middle class family Mr Haneke has produced a time capsule of the difficulties of living in a world where the richest 1% have as much wealth as the next 99% of people of the world and where the news media and impersonalising, isolating influence of social media drives us to misunderstand issues and to hate the rest of the 99%. A film with a happy ending for one of the characters, and one that I have to say I found highly amusing, and an ending that reinforces that the rich can literally get away with murder.
The film launches you into the various machinations of a construction company owning upper middle class family. Sexualised internet messages from people having affairs, phone camera's voyeuristically recording someone's mother as she passes from intimate daily routines through to the anonymous and almost impersonalised death throes of the character. These moments are designed to actively engage your brain right from the outset as you start to try and construct the narrative gaps. However they also serve, mirroring Haneke's 1992 film "Benny's Video", to show the distancing effect of technology on real human interaction and the almost sociopathic impact that this technology has on people's minds.
The film places us at the centre of a successful, cultured and beautiful family headed by a grandfather sinking towards dementia, brilliantly played by Jean Louis Trintignant who at 87 may have delivered here his greatest performance since the "Conformist". As we move behind this facade we see a son, played by Mathieu Kassovitz , who is a care giving doctor in his daily life but someone who does not know how to love or give genuine care to his own family, a man who is at his most alive typing out his sexual fantasies on facebook messenger. There is an austere daughter, played by the greatest screen actress of her generation Isabelle Huppert, who is the cold steel holding the family construction business together. There is the troubled grandson, Huppert's son, played by Franz Rogowski, physically imperfect and hence doomed to failure. Then there is the sweet looking granddaughter, brilliantly played Fantine Harduin, who delivers an astonishing performance for a 12 year old, who has been so tainted by this dysfunctional family and by the her constant reliance upon a version of life that is one step removed from reality by her phone video camera that she can barely grasp the fundamental morals of reality. Yet tragically all that she wants is to be loved and to belong.
There are the house servants of North African origin and the mongrel family dog, always filmed from the outside looking in and reduced to taking it's frustration out on the lowest ranking member of the household, the cooks daughter. Perhaps representing a world where the disenfranchised have their hatred misdirected to other struggling people rather than focussing upon those who are really responsible for their difficulties.
This is a living breathing world trapped inside the problems of the current day. Where migrants are forced to leave their homes, not for economic reasons but because their family members have been burnt alive by fundamentalist Muslims, Muslim extremists funded by Trump's fossil fuel buddies the Saudi Arabians and subtly referenced by the oil rigs shown in the film. A time and place where the simple physical presence of these dark skinned people at a gleaming white wedding serves to show the profound contrast in these people's lives. A world where Brexit is serving to disrupt the relationship between England and France (hence the inclusion of the English speaking character played by Toby Jones). A world where everything is contractual and where an ordinary working man's life is worth 35,000 Euro's and the compensation for a dog bite on a North African child is the remnants of a box of chocolates.
A brilliantly crafted film where every second seems to be perfectly judged, from intimate interiors to a terrific exterior tracking shot of the suicidal family patriarch, but keeping us as distanced observers, inviting us to actually THINK not consume. A film where every interior, every wardrobe choice seems to be casually perfect. Inside this coruscating study of an upper middle class family Mr Haneke has produced a time capsule of the difficulties of living in a world where the richest 1% have as much wealth as the next 99% of people of the world and where the news media and impersonalising, isolating influence of social media drives us to misunderstand issues and to hate the rest of the 99%. A film with a happy ending for one of the characters, and one that I have to say I found highly amusing, and an ending that reinforces that the rich can literally get away with murder.