Benny's Video (1992)
Country: ÖST/SW
Technical: col 105m
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mühe
Synopsis:
A schoolboy with a penchant for video murders a girl he has just met off the street, and his parents dispose of the body for him.
Review:
The second in a trilogy about the nature of violence, and employing the same actor, even plausibly the same character, as the later Funny Games. Haneke both tests his audience's endurance of violence and deliberately omits to show important plot events, thus toying with our desire to see the unthinkable nonetheless. He seems to be drawing a parallel, moreover, between violence without cause and the daughter's pyramid scheme which generates an illusory wealth without work: in both, the parents appear incapable of taking a moral stand, and so in the end the film indicts them for the crime. Not easy viewing.
Country: ÖST/SW
Technical: col 105m
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mühe
Synopsis:
A schoolboy with a penchant for video murders a girl he has just met off the street, and his parents dispose of the body for him.
Review:
The second in a trilogy about the nature of violence, and employing the same actor, even plausibly the same character, as the later Funny Games. Haneke both tests his audience's endurance of violence and deliberately omits to show important plot events, thus toying with our desire to see the unthinkable nonetheless. He seems to be drawing a parallel, moreover, between violence without cause and the daughter's pyramid scheme which generates an illusory wealth without work: in both, the parents appear incapable of taking a moral stand, and so in the end the film indicts them for the crime. Not easy viewing.
Country: ÖST/SW
Technical: col 105m
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mühe
Synopsis:
A schoolboy with a penchant for video murders a girl he has just met off the street, and his parents dispose of the body for him.
Review:
The second in a trilogy about the nature of violence, and employing the same actor, even plausibly the same character, as the later Funny Games. Haneke both tests his audience's endurance of violence and deliberately omits to show important plot events, thus toying with our desire to see the unthinkable nonetheless. He seems to be drawing a parallel, moreover, between violence without cause and the daughter's pyramid scheme which generates an illusory wealth without work: in both, the parents appear incapable of taking a moral stand, and so in the end the film indicts them for the crime. Not easy viewing.