Posts Tagged ‘Michael Haneke’

With a whimper…

‘Not with a bang, but a whimper’ – that was how poet and playwright T.S. Eliot once declared that the world would end, and there is no doubt that the most powerful cinematic evocations of Armageddon have made this concept their central tenet.

As with Michael Haneke’s Le temps du loup (The Time of the Wolf) (2003), John Hillcoat’s The Road (2009) thrusts us into the world that exists after a nameless, cataclysmic event – animal and plant life has been decimated, leaving the survivors who choose to carry on living to forage for whatever food can be found.

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OK, OK, so I got it completely wrong, I’m sorry…click here to have a giggle at just how bad a pundit your faithful reviewer is.

In the end, it was Michael Haneke’s Das weiße Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (The White Ribbon) that dominated the 22nd edition of the European Film Awards, collecting three prizes.

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Suffer the children

Directors before Michael Haneke have asked the same fundamental question that permeates his elegiac, trenchant study of darkness and light, Das weiße Band (2009) – namely, with specific reference to Germany, from whence did the affiliation with fascism rise, and how did a people turn a blind eye to the atrocities in their midst during the 20th century?

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Playing the games

More than ten years ago, German director Michael Haneke gave the world Funny Games (1997), a gruelling and relentless journey into nightmare that, along with greats such as Peeping Tom (1960) and Rear Window (1954) asks direct questions of the viewer concerning the voyeurism that is at the heart of cinema as an art form.

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