Funny Games

I was reading some more of Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things collection, which included a pretty dark account of the adult life of one of the characters from the CS Lewis Narnia books.

This morning I went out to get my groceries for the coming week. In the afternoon I went up to the cinema to see Funny Games U. S., directed by Michael Haneke, which is an American re-make of Haneke's own 1997 Austrian film Funny Games. The film stars Naomi Watts and Tim Roth as a wealthy couple who, with their young son, go up to spend a week or so at their holiday home by a lake. Shortly afterwards two polite, white-gloved young men who call themselves Peter (Michael Pitt) and Paul (Brady Corbet) arrive at their door and bet the family that by the following morning they (the family) will be dead. Whereupon the men start to play a series of cruel, mostly psychological, 'games' with their victims. The film is almost a shot-by-shot remake of the original, changing only the language, cast and location. The film is really disturbing, but virtually all the violence takes place off-screen (although sometimes what you hear can be as distrubing as what you actually see). The film plays around with horror and thriller film conventions, the attackers frequently break the fourth wall (i.e. directly address the viewers) by smirking at the camera and on a couple of occasions even speak to the audience directly. Also the attackers frequently give contradictory accounts of their backgrounds and motives in attacking the family, and even change their names several times. It's an extremely disturbing film, but very well-acted.

I was home in time to see the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who. It wasn't bad, but not as good as some them. I personally preferred the multi-episode Doctor Who stories.