If you’ve seen Michael Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES, you know what an uncompromising, frequently painful film experience it is. For those of you unaware, the movie concerns a family being terrorized by a couple of vicious, psychologically brutal young men who kidnap and torture them for the good part of an hour. We’re not talking gratuitous HOSTEL torture though, this isn’t splatter-movie stuff. This is cringe-inducing mental anguish. It is not fun, even on a voyeuristic level (making it all the more disturbing, the lead villain sometimes breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the audience, basically implicating us in his evil deeds as he snickers and grins obnoxiously). I am not a push-over when it comes to this kind’ve flick, I can stand just about anything, but this movie made my skin crawl.
Tough to imagine an American remake that doesn’t sugarcoat or at least blunt some of the trauma, but the producer promises that it will be exactly the same movie.
“It is literally a shot-for-shot remake,” producer Linda Moran told Fangoria, “so we haven’t changed the ending or anything like that.”
“We actually had blueprints from the house that was used in the original, and we went on a soundstage and built a set that matched those proportions exactly. Then we had to go out and find an exterior that would work as well. We shot in the Hamptons, at Shelter Island and southern Long Island. You’ll probably find that the look will be different; the compositions probably won’t be changed much, but since Darius Khondji (SE7EN) shot it and he’s such a great cinematographer, the images are going to be a little more lush, where the original is really dark-looking.”
Of course, this begs the question, why remake it at all? Haneke is directing it, so it might amount to a second-chance to clear up some mistakes on his end. That and I guess we can’t deal with subtitles.
I imagine that this will be advertised as your run-of-the-mill “psychological thriller,” and U.S. audiences will (if indeed nothing’s been changed) be exposed to a most difficult, grueling experience that is very far away from what they’re expecting.
It does have a very good cast however: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Michael Pitt. It opens on January 18, and whatever which way it goes, the reaction towards it should be very intriguing at the very least (hyseterical and outraged at the most).
Aint nothin funny about what happens to this lovely lady…
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