Michael Haneke

By my late teens I had developed a taste for the arty, esoteric, and obscure, especially in the world of cinema. While attending a screening of Nicholas Roeg's Performance (still love this movie big time) in Carbondale, Illinois (home of my alma mater: SIU-C), I listened with approval while one drunken frat boy encouraged another to "Just go with it" when he expressed perplexity with the rather non-linear narrative of the film.

A couple years later, I was sitting in a theater in Chicago watching the opening of David Lynch's Blue Velvet when the gentleman in front of me (perhaps more interested in getting out of the cold for a few hours than expanding his knowledge of avant-guard film), turned, looked me in the eye, and asked "What the fuck is this shit?" Following the example of my frat boy fellow film enthusiast, I attempted to reassure the man and encourage a "go with it" approach. This did not stop him from whipping around in his seat periodically to fix me with a look of disapproving perplexity during the rest of the movie.

So I was primed and ready for my first look at Michael Haneke who is an Austrian director. My friend Gordon and I went to the Gene Siskel Film Center to see Benny's Video, one of a number of "Why are these normal boys suddenly killing other kids for no reason?" pictures that hit after Columbine i.e. Zero Day and Elephant. Benny's Video may not give you any big insights into the problem, but I guarantee it will turn your blood to ice water.

The same might be said of The Piano Teacher. Isabelle Huppert stars in a fearless performance as a woman whose sexuality boils to the surface in spite of the icy clamp of repression from mom, society, men in general, a lover and God knows what else. Women are condemned for sexual frigidity but cast into the fires of contempt and perhaps banishment to hell when the scent of semen on a tissue arouses them.

Thanks to our dear friends at Netflix and The Chicago Public Library, I have been exploring the oeuvre of Mr. Haneke. You can check out The Castle, Funny Games, (in English and German), Code Unknown, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, Cache, and The White Ribbon among others that I haven't tracked down yet. I usually don't do this, but here's a quote from the New York Times Magazine: "Over the last two decades, the director has developed a reputation for stark, often brutal films that place the viewer — sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly — in the uncomfortable role of accomplice to the crimes playing out on-screen." Often there isn't a whole lot in the way of story lines with Mr. Haneke's pictures, but I generally find myself riveted from start to existentially bleak finish with them. Strangely, from the numerous Haneke interviews in the Special Features section of the DVDs of the above films  he seems to be an affable, laid-back guy, although there was one "behind the scenes" type feature where he totally blew up at his cinematic crew because they weren't doing exactly what he wanted. Who knows?