FM3: Small scale research project
Presentation script
Within the work of Michael Haneke, socio-political worlds of violent bourgeois suffering are often represented. In what way could this signify the director's auteuristic sensibilities?
Projector: "The three premises of the auteur theory may be visualised as three concentric circles: the outer circle as technique; the middle circle, personal style; and the in-ner circle, interior meaning." [9] - Andrew Sarris.
Speaker: Developed within the 1940's, the auteur theory is a groundbreaking ideology commenting on how directors are the predominant driving forces upon a film. Therefore, individual thematic signatures are inscribed throughout their filmography's entirety. In particular, the bleak work of Austrian director Michael Haneke is arguably marked with his personal signature of portraying socio-political worlds of violent suffering of the bourgeoisie, all containing an underlying and polysemic social commentary.
Projector: Clip of the dénouement of The Seventh Continent [2] in which the family are destroying their home furniture. - 15 seconds.
Speaker: The narrative of Austrian The Seventh Continent hinges upon a nuclear bourgeois family who are worn by our corporate world and its monotony. Its recurring motif of extreme close-ups of every-day objects ranging from cereal to furniture symbolises Haneke's philosophy of modern society being faceless and dehumanised by a dominating materialistic force, the imagery's repetitiveness symbolic of our routine and daily drone. Brunette commenting that Haneke is an iconoclastic filmmaker who stabs at the "spiritual emptiness of our generation," [4] the way in which the family smashes a fish tank and we bleakly spectate each fish gasp for air in an uncomfortable reel of extreme close-ups is suggestive of how society has become drained and emptied of life, yet we are stuck in this purgatory of constantly waiting for an escape, like the characters who originally plan to move to Australia. However, in the film's opening mise-en-scene, a 'Welcome to Australia' poster is plastered at the exit of a limbo-esque car wash, yet the picture of a beach is far from idyllic, showing that the reality of escapism is isolated through the edited blue colouring. Haneke, therefore, sociologically critiques "the obscenity and the extremity of the everyday" [7] with these fatalistic characters and motifs, the director perceiving that "the truth is always obscene," with the hope that all of his films "have at least an element of obscenity," [7] and, thus, his auteuristic truth of humanity.
Projector: Clip of Hidden's dinner scene where a tape and child-like drawing of a beheaded chicken is received. [3] - 20 seconds.
Speaker: Within Haneke's French work Hidden created in 2005, a "malevolent force into a comfortable bourgeois existence" [5] is again represented as one recurring theme of his filmography, whilst jabs at society's daily entrapment, alike to his first 1983 released piece. Although this nuclear family, to juxtapose, appear comfortable with their Modernist monotony, the encoded mise-en-scene illustrates how they are also stagnated by this corporate force, but hide from it. Ezra and Sillars spectate that the two protagonist's "grey, shapeless clothes are reminiscent of prison uniforms," and that "the couple's stylish house is a gated fortress" to imply that they are "prisoners of their own making." [13] This perception is evident in this scene of the film's rising action, with geometric lines looming behind each Middle class character to again reinforce Haneke's belief on society's set fatalism.
Furthermore, the polysemy of Haneke's films can be shown through their semiotics; for example, this child-like symbol of a beheaded chicken. Not only does this image mirror his view on humanity and how we are entrapped livestock, the chicken may also reflect the character of Majid who commits suicide by brutally cutting his neck within the climax. The underlying ideology of this symbol suggests that Haneke is anti-establishment, perhaps socially commentating on when Algerians were protesting against a French policy which resulted in a conflict with the police whereby demonstrators were killed and injured in 1961. In the narrative, the corporate white male's bigotry catalyses Majid's suicide, who has now become a hidden and taboo subject for the protagonist who is representative of France and its colonialism. As an auteur, Haneke's thirst is to resurface socio-political concerns at the underbellies of each film, and "restore shock-value to the image" [11] through these dark themes as we are becoming more desensitised.
Projector: "At the point of tension between the active pleasure drive and the modernist obstacles that Haneke places in its way, an impact occurs whereby the spectator becomes aware of themself as complicit in the cinematic spectacle." [6] - Catherine Wheatley.
Speaker: In order to portray the character's on-screen suffering effectively and forcefully and restore this "shock-value," [11] Haneke's most punitive technique is to reflect and connect with the audience by utilising the social theory of Reflexivity and "ethical spectatorship." [6] For instance, this can be emphasised by how the death of an animal is in some way planted into the narratives of most of his films. This includes a pig's death in Benny's Video, a dog's death in Funny Games, a chicken's death in Hidden, a horse's death in Time of the Wolf, and many more, to, as Haneke stated in an interview, have "more impact on the spectator." [16] Additionally, as when these animals are killed, "it doesn't have to be fictional," [16] real suffering is demonstrated to represent the pain of his characters who are a figuration of the bourgeois audience. "The repeated use of the same names and the same actors gives Haneke's fictional characters a strangely inhuman status; these subjects are not exactly singular and therefore not quite human. Haneke's humanist project, then, proceeds by deliberately representing allegorical incarnations of human types," [8] or the bourgeoisie.
Alongside to the mise-en-scene of his body of work, the camerawork and audio codes are quite naturalistic, his personal style proposing him as an auteur. His stylistic technicality typically consists of a static camera and shots that are lengthy in duration. The equilibrium of Hidden is a prominent example of this, as it opens with a wide shot of a street in daylight and closes with another wide shot of a school with children exiting, making the spectator act as alienated surveillance. This style instantaneously portrays a sense of isolation from humanity and blends us in with the mise-en-scene, and plunges us into a part of the monotonous cycle. Furthermore, this minimalism is highlighted through the lack of non-diegetic sound, and Haneke often silences these shots. Code Unknown, released in 2001, for example, opens with deaf children using sign language and we hear life from their ears through a lack of sound, which almost becomes deafening. Coulthard analyses this, suggesting that Haneke creates a "violence bred by non-communication," and reinforces a Reflexivity with the audience by the film acting "as a giant ear, listening to us as we listen to ourselves listening to silence." [14]
Projector: Segment from a Serge Toubiana interview with Haneke on Funny Games [1], quoting "The killer communicates with the viewer. He makes the viewer his accomplice. I turn the viewer into the killer's accomplice, and in the end, I chastise the viewer for playing that role. It's rather sarcastic, but I wanted to demonstrate how we always become the killer's accomplice when watching this type of film. Not self-reflective films like this one, but films that portray violence in an "acceptable" way."[15] - 30 seconds.
Speaker: Haneke, here, talking of Funny Games, interestingly labels his film as "self-reflective," as though its self consciousness places his filmography into an anti-genre to underline his stabbing of humanity. This film, both the original from 1997 and his shot-by-shot American remake in 2007, is particularly reflexive with the audience, again through the almost archetypal bourgeois characters and their attack. This is another example of Haneke's "invasion of outside forces into a private sphere" to show "real-world unbalance." [12]
Projector: Clip from the 2007 Funny Games [1] where one antagonist gets shot so the other rewinds the narrative with a remote control. - 70 seconds.
Speaker: In four separate scenes of the text, the antagonist breaks the fourth wall, in two looking straight into the camera's lens and into the audience's mind, and in the others directly talking to us, quoting "Do you think they stand a chance? You're on their side, aren't you?" and "You want a real ending, right, with plausible plot development? Don't you?" With this technique and dialogue, Haneke is satirising the the media as being a formulaic machine and manipulates our perceptions on people, and forces us to question this with his daunting stare. His ideology is that "nothing has changed" and "the media have continued to get worse and worse," [12] and so has used imagery of television screens and surveillance throughout his entire iconography, significantly in Hidden and Benny's Video, to again socio-politically symbolise our man-made and dehumanised world. However, as when some audience members at a question and answer session after a screening of the remake at the Harvard Film Archive "expressed concerns at being manipulated," Haneke replied with the film's tagline, "you have to admit, you brought this on yourself." [16] Thus, the dominating philosophy that rules over his work is that we have constructed ourselves as being disconnected from reality, therefore Haneke aims to hold up a dark mirror and create a strong and violent connection with the spectator.
Projector: Segment from a documentary on Haneke called My Life, with him stating "Writers and filmmakers, that is people who describe the world, suffer from an occupational disease. They never experience moments in life quite spontaneously. You always look at yourself from the outside. Even as a child I always observed myself and the world. I believe that everybody who chooses this path in any way, who chooses to be a describer of life, suffers from this condition. It's like a mental obsession." [10] - 41 seconds.
Speaker: Distinctly, Haneke's "mental obsession" is with the mechanics of humanity and our social and political creations. According to Sarris' own perceptions of the Auteur theory, his outer circle is a naturalistic stagnation displayed through technical elements, and his middle circle is a reflexive connection with the audience as his personal style. Combined, these spew an inner circle of his interior meaning based upon personal ideologies; "We all have a dark side," [10] he believes, and that we are so clouded by materialism and the media that we are so out of touch with pleasure and humanity that violence and darkness are taking control of the every day sufferer. After all, "the real victim is not on screen but sitting in the darkened theatre." [11] The way in which Haneke weaves this message into each of his films with such delicacy must distinguish him as an auteur, perhaps making him one of the most influential faces of cinema to the active mind.
Projector: Clip of the dénouement of The Seventh Continent [2] in which the family are destroying their home furniture. - 15 seconds.
Speaker: The narrative of Austrian The Seventh Continent hinges upon a nuclear bourgeois family who are worn by our corporate world and its monotony. Its recurring motif of extreme close-ups of every-day objects ranging from cereal to furniture symbolises Haneke's philosophy of modern society being faceless and dehumanised by a dominating materialistic force, the imagery's repetitiveness symbolic of our routine and daily drone. Brunette commenting that Haneke is an iconoclastic filmmaker who stabs at the "spiritual emptiness of our generation," [4] the way in which the family smashes a fish tank and we bleakly spectate each fish gasp for air in an uncomfortable reel of extreme close-ups is suggestive of how society has become drained and emptied of life, yet we are stuck in this purgatory of constantly waiting for an escape, like the characters who originally plan to move to Australia. However, in the film's opening mise-en-scene, a 'Welcome to Australia' poster is plastered at the exit of a limbo-esque car wash, yet the picture of a beach is far from idyllic, showing that the reality of escapism is isolated through the edited blue colouring. Haneke, therefore, sociologically critiques "the obscenity and the extremity of the everyday" [7] with these fatalistic characters and motifs, the director perceiving that "the truth is always obscene," with the hope that all of his films "have at least an element of obscenity," [7] and, thus, his auteuristic truth of humanity.
Projector: Clip of Hidden's dinner scene where a tape and child-like drawing of a beheaded chicken is received. [3] - 20 seconds.
Speaker: Within Haneke's French work Hidden created in 2005, a "malevolent force into a comfortable bourgeois existence" [5] is again represented as one recurring theme of his filmography, whilst jabs at society's daily entrapment, alike to his first 1983 released piece. Although this nuclear family, to juxtapose, appear comfortable with their Modernist monotony, the encoded mise-en-scene illustrates how they are also stagnated by this corporate force, but hide from it. Ezra and Sillars spectate that the two protagonist's "grey, shapeless clothes are reminiscent of prison uniforms," and that "the couple's stylish house is a gated fortress" to imply that they are "prisoners of their own making." [13] This perception is evident in this scene of the film's rising action, with geometric lines looming behind each Middle class character to again reinforce Haneke's belief on society's set fatalism.
Furthermore, the polysemy of Haneke's films can be shown through their semiotics; for example, this child-like symbol of a beheaded chicken. Not only does this image mirror his view on humanity and how we are entrapped livestock, the chicken may also reflect the character of Majid who commits suicide by brutally cutting his neck within the climax. The underlying ideology of this symbol suggests that Haneke is anti-establishment, perhaps socially commentating on when Algerians were protesting against a French policy which resulted in a conflict with the police whereby demonstrators were killed and injured in 1961. In the narrative, the corporate white male's bigotry catalyses Majid's suicide, who has now become a hidden and taboo subject for the protagonist who is representative of France and its colonialism. As an auteur, Haneke's thirst is to resurface socio-political concerns at the underbellies of each film, and "restore shock-value to the image" [11] through these dark themes as we are becoming more desensitised.
Projector: "At the point of tension between the active pleasure drive and the modernist obstacles that Haneke places in its way, an impact occurs whereby the spectator becomes aware of themself as complicit in the cinematic spectacle." [6] - Catherine Wheatley.
Speaker: In order to portray the character's on-screen suffering effectively and forcefully and restore this "shock-value," [11] Haneke's most punitive technique is to reflect and connect with the audience by utilising the social theory of Reflexivity and "ethical spectatorship." [6] For instance, this can be emphasised by how the death of an animal is in some way planted into the narratives of most of his films. This includes a pig's death in Benny's Video, a dog's death in Funny Games, a chicken's death in Hidden, a horse's death in Time of the Wolf, and many more, to, as Haneke stated in an interview, have "more impact on the spectator." [16] Additionally, as when these animals are killed, "it doesn't have to be fictional," [16] real suffering is demonstrated to represent the pain of his characters who are a figuration of the bourgeois audience. "The repeated use of the same names and the same actors gives Haneke's fictional characters a strangely inhuman status; these subjects are not exactly singular and therefore not quite human. Haneke's humanist project, then, proceeds by deliberately representing allegorical incarnations of human types," [8] or the bourgeoisie.
Alongside to the mise-en-scene of his body of work, the camerawork and audio codes are quite naturalistic, his personal style proposing him as an auteur. His stylistic technicality typically consists of a static camera and shots that are lengthy in duration. The equilibrium of Hidden is a prominent example of this, as it opens with a wide shot of a street in daylight and closes with another wide shot of a school with children exiting, making the spectator act as alienated surveillance. This style instantaneously portrays a sense of isolation from humanity and blends us in with the mise-en-scene, and plunges us into a part of the monotonous cycle. Furthermore, this minimalism is highlighted through the lack of non-diegetic sound, and Haneke often silences these shots. Code Unknown, released in 2001, for example, opens with deaf children using sign language and we hear life from their ears through a lack of sound, which almost becomes deafening. Coulthard analyses this, suggesting that Haneke creates a "violence bred by non-communication," and reinforces a Reflexivity with the audience by the film acting "as a giant ear, listening to us as we listen to ourselves listening to silence." [14]
Projector: Segment from a Serge Toubiana interview with Haneke on Funny Games [1], quoting "The killer communicates with the viewer. He makes the viewer his accomplice. I turn the viewer into the killer's accomplice, and in the end, I chastise the viewer for playing that role. It's rather sarcastic, but I wanted to demonstrate how we always become the killer's accomplice when watching this type of film. Not self-reflective films like this one, but films that portray violence in an "acceptable" way."[15] - 30 seconds.
Speaker: Haneke, here, talking of Funny Games, interestingly labels his film as "self-reflective," as though its self consciousness places his filmography into an anti-genre to underline his stabbing of humanity. This film, both the original from 1997 and his shot-by-shot American remake in 2007, is particularly reflexive with the audience, again through the almost archetypal bourgeois characters and their attack. This is another example of Haneke's "invasion of outside forces into a private sphere" to show "real-world unbalance." [12]
Projector: Clip from the 2007 Funny Games [1] where one antagonist gets shot so the other rewinds the narrative with a remote control. - 70 seconds.
Speaker: In four separate scenes of the text, the antagonist breaks the fourth wall, in two looking straight into the camera's lens and into the audience's mind, and in the others directly talking to us, quoting "Do you think they stand a chance? You're on their side, aren't you?" and "You want a real ending, right, with plausible plot development? Don't you?" With this technique and dialogue, Haneke is satirising the the media as being a formulaic machine and manipulates our perceptions on people, and forces us to question this with his daunting stare. His ideology is that "nothing has changed" and "the media have continued to get worse and worse," [12] and so has used imagery of television screens and surveillance throughout his entire iconography, significantly in Hidden and Benny's Video, to again socio-politically symbolise our man-made and dehumanised world. However, as when some audience members at a question and answer session after a screening of the remake at the Harvard Film Archive "expressed concerns at being manipulated," Haneke replied with the film's tagline, "you have to admit, you brought this on yourself." [16] Thus, the dominating philosophy that rules over his work is that we have constructed ourselves as being disconnected from reality, therefore Haneke aims to hold up a dark mirror and create a strong and violent connection with the spectator.
Projector: Segment from a documentary on Haneke called My Life, with him stating "Writers and filmmakers, that is people who describe the world, suffer from an occupational disease. They never experience moments in life quite spontaneously. You always look at yourself from the outside. Even as a child I always observed myself and the world. I believe that everybody who chooses this path in any way, who chooses to be a describer of life, suffers from this condition. It's like a mental obsession." [10] - 41 seconds.
Speaker: Distinctly, Haneke's "mental obsession" is with the mechanics of humanity and our social and political creations. According to Sarris' own perceptions of the Auteur theory, his outer circle is a naturalistic stagnation displayed through technical elements, and his middle circle is a reflexive connection with the audience as his personal style. Combined, these spew an inner circle of his interior meaning based upon personal ideologies; "We all have a dark side," [10] he believes, and that we are so clouded by materialism and the media that we are so out of touch with pleasure and humanity that violence and darkness are taking control of the every day sufferer. After all, "the real victim is not on screen but sitting in the darkened theatre." [11] The way in which Haneke weaves this message into each of his films with such delicacy must distinguish him as an auteur, perhaps making him one of the most influential faces of cinema to the active mind.
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