Haneke's Signature Move

The title is a little cheeky but here's something I found in Haneke's work awhile back. Regardless he's a great director you should all check out.
(Note: Sorry the format changed in the last paragraph but think everybody was too excited to read to the end. Ha)

Numbing the Pain

            Michael Haneke has made eleven films over the course of his career that together show the distinct signature of the director. Haneke is cold. Haneke is distant and voyeuristic. One almost feels like they are spying on the characters in the films. And of course Michael Haneke is violent. He shocks and disturbs you with not always the images but the suggestion of the images. But that is not his signature. To me, Michael Haneke’s signature is the disengagement he creates towards the action, often violent or in other ways unsettling, onscreen.

            Michael Haneke does not immerse his audience into the worlds of his films. Through techniques of style and content he allows them to remain disconnected to what is going on onscreen.

            He often sets up shots at a distinct from the action, avoiding close-ups for whole scenes that are often long extended takes as well. This can be scene in Code Unknown, for instance, in the street scenes, which are tracking shots where the camera follows the action from one end of the street to the other. Whereas the shot could show the characters close up, instead the entire bodies of the characters are often visible. This literal distance creates a space between the audience and the film that is important as Code Unknown’s fragmented style allows the story to examine the culturally different lives of the film. Haneke does not make judgments or choose which lifestyle is right. He gives each equal time and attention. This also adds to the disengagement, as Haneke also refuses to directly engage. He is also merely watching like us. He does not even judge when Juliette Binoche’s character ignores the sounds of her neighbors beating their child. We hear but cannot see. We want to engage but Haneke’s focus on Binoche not responding disallows our involvement. We are disengaged.

            Such is also the case in the narrative of Caché as well. The film follows the life of a family as they are sent tapes that have been recorded of their lives. The tapes are seamlessly integrated into the film, shot with the same definition and clarity as the normal narrative, and their introduction is always glossed over. We only find out we are watching a tape after it is paused. This creates a distance from the screen as the audience can never relax and enjoy but must instead be ever on guard to distinguish between what is really happening and what is on tape. It is also interesting to note that once again many of the tapes are shot from far away, giving them the voyeuristic quality like we are watching people’s private lives. We do not feel a part of those lives because of this, just observers of.

            This disconnect is further complicated by a scene from the father’s past, where his adoptive brother is shown being taken away. A scene that should not possibly be able to be a tape is given all the signs of one, the far away set up, the static motion, and the long take. Haneke then makes the audience watch, guarded against the possibility of this all being a tape, as the boy is taken from his home, he runs away, is dragged into the car, beaten, and driven away against his will. The whole scene takes place in relative silence considering the dramatic and violent nature of what is being shown on screen. Yet the quiet watchful gaze of the camera never moves closer. The audience is removed from the action and cannot engage because they are too busy worrying over whether or not this is really happening onscreen right now.

            Another way in which the disconnect is felt in the film is the fact that the perpetrator behind the tapes is never found and the film seemingly ends with footage shot for another tape. Haneke refuses resolution and instead leaves the audience with a question of whether the final shot was a tape or not. In the final shot that question keeps the audience from engaging as they focus more on that then the scene the shot is watching.

            Haneke often treats violence with a cold and unflinching demeanor, probably stemming from his stance against violence. He wants his audience to feel how uncomfortable such pain actually is so he does not look at either victim or perpetrator, and instead keeps us removed so that we may look upon the act itself, even if it is not directly shown. Haneke does not want us see the explicit physical violence most films show but the emotional violence that comes from its effects that are often ignored or overshadowed.

            In The White Ribbon there is a scene where a child is being punished. His face is pointed down as he walks into the room with his father and the door closes for a while before he comes back out, gets a switch, and goes back to his father as the door closes again. Then after what seems like much longer than the few seconds it is we start to hear the boy’s screams come from beyond the door as he is beaten. We watch the whole scene from the hallway, watching the kid sulk from room to room while never following him into any of them. We don’t even get to see the beating. We are separating from it physically, and Haneke uses that to make us wonder why we in some way want to see it but can’t. We can’t see him in the room with his father because of the door, and the room where he gets the switch is also unseen because of its darkness. The audience is contained in the hallway and Haneke does not let us experience anything without.

            The audience is entirely removed from the scene of violence as they wait and listen in the hall. Haneke doesn’t even give us what the child is thinking. We don’t engage in his emotion either. We see him sulk but don’t focus on his face, and so it is often not visible. He could be angry, regretful, or resolved, but Haneke doesn’t tell us. Doesn’t let us know.

            The story of the film is also seemingly about an unknown person committing violence, tripping a horse and beating a child, but the focus on this event and other events without clear connections to that problem make it hard to become engrossed in such a plot. Instead the story is really just fragments of country life in the different families. But there is a disconnect there, further enhanced by the fact that the violence plot is never resolved. Haneke never reveals who was behind the acts so the audience feels unfulfilled. They are simple left with all the violence committed in the homes that no one considers a crime like a father beating his child.

            Whether it be the sound of the beating or the silence of it in the case of the child in Caché, Haneke is a master of discomfort born of separation and selected vision, and Benny’s Video certainly offers one of his best examples. In the movie Benny kills a girl with a captive bolt pistol used in Benny’s home video to kill a pig. The horrifying scene in question does involve him killing her, but it takes place off camera. Haneke starts us off by showing our two characters, Benny and the girl, talking about the pig slaughter. Haneke even starts off with some close ups allowing a little more intimacy with the characters. Then after the girl refuses to shoot Benny she counters by telling him to shoot her then, except he does. With little hesitation he shoots her with the pistol below frame as she then is seen falling on the screen behind them of the home video camera feed. From here on out our only view of the scene comes from this screen, as Benny scrambles to reload and shoot her two more times, prevented her at one point from leaving by dragging her screaming body away from the door.

            The scene is violent of course, but Haneke does not allow us to see it. Instead we must hear her screams and struggles to crawl away, hear Benny’s struggles to reload and kill her. The disengagement with the act makes the whole thing more uncomfortable as the audience feels truly like an observer, helpless to do anything but try to pay attention through the indirect means of sound without visual and video of a video of the wrong part of the room. The violence is felt more viscerally by only being able to experience the sounds and fragmented images of just her head and Benny as he points the pistol at her before she screams and crawls away. The whole thing is very disturbing as only Michael Haneke can be.

            Another way Michael Haneke makes us feel disconnected and uncomfortable is through juxtaposition. Funny Games is a film about a family that is being tormented by two sadistic criminals. In one scene they are playing a counted game to decide who to kill—the son ends up getting shot in the head—but in the middle of the game one of the men, Paul, leaves the room and goes to make some food to eat, and that is who Haneke chooses to follow. We watch him get food out of the fridge and listen to the TV as the counting game goes on silently. Then we hear a bit of a struggle before a gunshot, but we stay in the kitchen even after that and watch Paul prepare his food. Then Haneke cuts to a shot of the TV streaked in blood and we still don’t get to see the action of the living room scene again. Then the criminals leave while we are still watching the TV. Only then do we see the room again.

            The kid’s head, presumably blown apart, is unseen behind the TV and the father is also hidden behind the couch. Only the mother is visible and it is on her face we see the effect of what happened. Haneke does not give us anything directly but makes us piece together the horrifying scene in its aftermath. He makes us create it in our heads from fragments of information. The scene goes on an almost unbearable amount of time as the mother tries to help up the father and he cries.

            Haneke also makes it hard to engage in Funny Games by his breaking of the fourth wall. When Paul winks at the camera or talks to it directly, asking whose side the audience is on, it is a bit jarring. It takes the audience out of the movie to remind them they are watching a movie. Paul even makes references to the construction of a film, such as it needing to be feature length, before he completely shatters the divide between film and narrative by actually rewinding the film and changing what happened. This like the tapes from Caché prevents the audience from truly immersing themselves in the film. It separates them and making it harder for them to connect with what’s happening onscreen. Plus it makes you feel uncomfortable to be addressed directly by sadistic murderer.

            Haneke forcibly drags you away from the narrative he is creating so that you may not engage with it directly. He then presents you with a series of fragmented images and sounds that imply more than show you very disturbing or uncomfortable actions. That is his signature. He doesn’t show you the murder yet you still feel it. You can’t touch the beatings but they still shock you. Haneke’s films are about disengagement. And he uses that disengagement to make you feel uncomfortable with the places he takes you. You don’t belong there because you are not a part of those films. Haneke never lets you forget you are watching a film and reminds what a cold and lonely experience that really is. Watching his films are like listening to man who is numb to pain tell you painful stories. And the fact that he is unaffected by the torment is the most horrifying part about listening.