By Spence Blazak
For years, the name Michael Haneke has
been synonymous with “unpredictability” and “abstract” in the film world. His
latest film, “Amour” has scored an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, a place
on many best of the year lists, and is nothing like any of his previous films.
The once inaccessible director has ditched his more outlandish experimental
film techniques, and in return has crafted what just might be his masterpiece.
His 1997 film “Funny Games,” follows
a unassuming family who lets two well groomed strangers into their house for a
cold drink, but are then tortured by competing in a series of titular “funny games”
to fight for their lives. The film pushed the limits of onscreen torture, and
is as hard to watch as it gets. Kneecaps are broken with golfclubs, pets are killed at the drop of a hat. At one point, one of the intruder’s lets his
guard down, causing his partner's death at a tense point in the film. The man
reacts by scrambling through the seat cushions of a couch, finding a television
remote, and using it to rewind the last five minutes of the events on screen. Haneke
then created a shot-for-shot American remake of the film ten years later. This
sums up the director and his style to a tee. At his core, Haneke is
unapologetically art house.
Another major Haneke work is 2005’s
“Cache.” A man finds a videotape on his doorstep, containing surveillance
footage of his front door and house. The film opens with the audience watching five
minutes of the video, confused and disturbed about what is going on. The
mystery unravels, and while accomplishing a disturbing level of paranoia that comes with feeling watched, "Cache" still leaves so much ambiguity in its ending that viewers are
still debating what it actually meant. The film doesn’t particularly flesh out
what it wants to say, and its take-it-or-leave-it style makes it very
ostracizing to the average filmgoer.
With “Amour,” Haneke strikes a
balance between his distinct visual style and a riveting story, rather than
going over board with one or the other as he has often done in the past. “Amour”
is a story of unconditional love filled with a purity and tenderness that
rivals that of the opening montage of “Up”. It follows elderly couple Georges
and Anne who try to cope when the Anne has a stroke. As Georges begins to see
the handwriting on the wall, he at first ignores it, but as the story goes on,
the inevitable begins to consume him.
The title just means “Love.” This beautiful simplicity
permeates through Haneke’s film, and is a far cry from his in-your-face style
of the past. The two lead characters are just everyday people who happen to be
very much in love. The background stories on them are simple yet telling; they
were both music teachers who, though retired, still follow the successes of
their old pupils. At one point, Anne says to Georges, “Over the years, we’ve
been through everything,” and that fills up the rest of the exposition.
As Anne gets sicker and sicker, Georges’
optimism gets dimmer and dimmer. He looks for a confidant in his daughter, but
she doesn’t seem to pick up on the emotional toll that the situation is taking
on both of her parents. He tries to fight off his greatest fear: loneliness and
seclusion. This all leads up to the climax that will make you remember how sad a movie can really be.
“Amour” is an example of a film
that doesn’t need to be overcrowded to tell a touching story, and it seems that
Haneke’s whole career until this point has been a learning experience through
his failings in that aspect. With this film he has thrown aside all of his
unnecessarily edgy material and his shots that are confusing for the sake of confusion, instead deciding to focus on the relationship at
the center of the story. The film takes place almost exclusively in the
couple’s apartment. Minimalist, yet larger-than-life in content, Haneke uses
his latest, and arguably his greatest work, to show that a little can go a very
long way.
