I am really happy that the use of color in movies was reframed for me with Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy. Most notably White for allowing me to understand that White is a color often used for comedic purposes. It’s light, it’s open, it’s free from the restraints of dramatic heft. It’s something in White where Kieslowski uses the color to accentuate a light-footed human emotion while intertwining it with the melancholy of it’s narrative. It’s something we also see mastered in Fargo. A crime drama from beginning to end, but a gut-bustingly hilarious movie accented by the crunch of snow under the character’s feet. With Michael Haneke’s Funny Games he approaches it similarly, but in a way I had never seen before.
The production design is draped, upholstered, clothed in white, but only because the perspective of the camera is dictated by the antagonist. This is bluntly noted also by it’s fourth wall breaks, but the family we are forcibly rooting for is at a severe, obvious disadvantage. For them this is not their story. They are simply pawns in someone else’s and the camera, production design, and costuming define that thin veiled line. It’s subversive by way of reframing our expectations of what is initially perceived as a typical home invasion thriller. It’s production design directly contradicts our long history with understanding what makes the audience feel someone or something is evil and scary. We have these vivid associations of specific colors, lightings, and moods to horror, and Haneke essentially chops that structure at the knee and he rebuilds it his way. This is something mastered in the sequence with Georgi Jr. on the run and finding himself trapped in the house next door.
In this sequence the camera chronicles Georgi’s hopeful escape, but he becomes surrounded by shades of inescapable darkness. This scene fits the bill of every horror trope we came to expect initially. This is only because the camera moves to Georgi’s perspective. The blaring white antagonist is pushed to the peripherals as Georgi tries to maneuver his way out. Which ends up being a complete mirage by the end of the sequence when the antagonist abruptly ends his hope with a flash of light. A light typically associated with escaping the grasps of evil. This happens because the camera and narrative is dictated by the antagonist. He teaches Georgi how to cock the gun, giving him the last bit of hope to escape, but in doing so Georgi is moved to pull the trigger to the realization the barrels are empty. Essentially symbolizing that the antagonist has gotten exactly what he wanted. He created a scenario where our desire to see violence done unto him is directly streamlined to the themes of the movie by way of audience participation.
In no way are we rooting for the demise of the family, but the perspective is locked in to the antagonist’s that our desires for victory are unachievable. The story has been dictated by a lone perspective and our yearn for their escape by way of violence. It provokes us into a scenario where we find ourself wondering how we participate with movies and what we are eager to see. Because what we do end up seeing is violence, but we hate it, we loathe it, it makes us uncomfortable, but shouldn’t all violence be perceived that way? Why are we gratified at the thought of the villains being blown to smitherines, but that type of violence being done unto the protagonists makes us sick? It’s as simple as (and it’s already been stated before so this is no revelation on my part) the media’s manipulation of the camera and how it wants us to perceive acts, events, behaviors, and moods. That is the clinical, audacious genius of what this movie strives for.
Funny Games isn’t funny at all. It’s a terribly grueling sprint to death’s doorstep, but that’s because we are the victims and subjects of the commentary dictated by the antagonists, their desires, and how that relates to our insatiable need for violence to unseat violence. All sense of isolation is broken after the fourth wall is toppled and our experience is dictated by the inevitability of what the antagonists have preordained. Hence the conclusion of the film and the blunt realization of the cycle of violence continuing with a sadistic grin towards us as we ponder what it is the antagonists will do next. It’s ingenious, really.