If the mayhem in "Funny Games" is so true-to-life, why doesn't Haneke infuse his killers with the same human understanding that he provides their victims? Watts and Roth, after all, are certainly encouraged to make us feel their characters' pain, and the little boy's fright is traumatizing.
The answer, I think, is that Haneke sees Peter and Paul as both less and more than human. Either way, they're unreal -- monstrous symbols of, yes, "the emptiness of existence." They are as depraved as Freddy Krueger, with better hair and with somewhat better manners. (Maybe in the third go-round, Haneke can pit his Manichaean Beavis and Butt-head against Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh. I'd pay to see that.)
Despite Haneke's high-toned talk in interviews about deconstructing violence in "Funny Games," or about how the media has desensitized us from "reality," what really gets his goat is the bourgeoise. In his view, their love of art, opera and books, their taste for golf and fine wine, has insulated them from their basest and most authentic selves. In film after film, Haneke flays the middle class without ever actually acknowledging that he is doing so. The worst violence in his new movie is mostly off camera, but the humiliations Ann and George undergo are luridly exposed. These people must suffer for their comforts.
Haneke is undeniably gifted but he's also a scourge who plays both sides of the ideological fence. He covets the dignity of Ann and George while merrily obliterating them. He implicates us as voyeurs -- accomplices -- in his bloody postmodern prank; at the same time, he has no qualms about parading Watts in her bra and panties. No doubt some will see her get-up as totemic or anomic or whatever.
In the end, the difference between "Funny Games" and Hollywood schlock horror may only be a matter of breeding. "Funny Games" is "Saw IV" with a PhD.
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"Funny Games." MPAA rating: R for terror, violence and some language. Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes. In limited release.
