Michael Haneke's Funny Games is Pirandello on steroids. Its portrayal of authorial caprice and wantonness all in the name of "entertainment" and "plausibility" is brutal, draining and eminently revealing. The story - a nearly shot-by-shot remake of Haneke's 1997 film of the same title - is simple enough. The Farbers (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Devon Gearhart) meet two boyish, amiable visitors (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) at their vacation home. Before long, however, it becomes clear that they are to be the pawns in a horrifying, sadistic series of "funny games" at the pleasure of the young men and, by extension, the audience. Haneke thus reveals just how perverse our voyeuristic obsession with melodrama, violence and raw sexuality in the modern media truly is.
While this message is undoubtedly powerful, this incarnation of the film does nothing but knowingly reiterate (mostly word for word) the original. Remakes ideally serve to instill dated films with new applicability in a changed society and/or to take advantage of advances in filmmaking technology. Funny Games offers neither. Likewise, the performances smack of emulation of their 1997 counterparts. Only Michael Pitt makes an attempt to break away from his forebear. However, his clearly belabored attempt at balancing Norman Bates and Alex DeLarge leaves impression that he is, at root, uncomfortable in the role.
On reflection, therefore, it seems that this film's sole raison d'ˆtre is merely to repackage its masterful parent into a form digestible by the subtitle-phobic. But why study a carbon copy when the real article is readily available? It was the 1997 version that was ground-breaking and truly shocking. Indeed, who remembers Gus Van Sant's recapitulated shower scene in Psycho? Go rent the original instead - it, unlike this remake, earns four stars.
