Funny Games
Michael Haneke’s most notorious provocation, Funny Games spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. In a series of escalating “games,” the sadistic duo subject their victims to unspeakable physical and psychological torture over the course of a night. A home-invasion thriller in which the genre’s threat of bloodshed is made stomach-churningly real, the film ratchets up shocks even as its executioners interrupt the action to address the audience, drawing queasy attention to the way that cinema milks pleasure from pain and stokes our appetite for atrocity. With this controversial treatise on violence and entertainment, Haneke issued a summation of his cinematic philosophy, implicating his audience in a spectacle of unbearable cruelty.
Director-Approved Special Edition Features
- New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Michael Haneke, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interviews with Haneke and actor Arno Frisch
- New interview with film historian Alexander Horwath
- Press conference from the 1997 Cannes Film Festival featuring Haneke and actors Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Bilge Ebiri
Director-Approved Special Edition Features
- New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Michael Haneke, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interviews with Haneke and actor Arno Frisch
- New interview with film historian Alexander Horwath
- Press conference from the 1997 Cannes Film Festival featuring Haneke and actors Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Bilge Ebiri
Cast
- Susanne Lothar
- Anna
- Ulrich Mühe
- Georg
- Arno Frisch
- Paul
- Frank Giering
- Peter
- Stefan Clapczynski
- Georgie
- Doris Kunstmann
- Gerda
- Christoph Bantzer
- Fred
- Wolfgang Glück
- Robert
- Susanne Meneghel
- Gerda's sister
- Monika Zallinger
- Eva
Credits
- Director
- Michael Haneke
- Screenplay by
- Michael Haneke
- Producer
- Veit Heiduschka
- Director of photography
- Jürgen Jürges
- Sound
- Walter Amann
- Editor
- Andreas Prochaska
- Set design
- Christoph Kanter
- Makeup
- Waldemar Pokromski
- Music
- Händel Georg Friedrich
- Music
- Pietro Mascagni
- Music
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Music
- John Zorn
A scene from Funny Games
