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Arno Frisch in Benny's Video |
Cast: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mūhe, Ingrid Stassner, Stephanie Brehme, Stefan Polasek. Screenplay: Michael Haneke. Cinematography: Christian Berger. Production design: Christoph Kanter. Film editing: Maria Homolkova.
Sometimes I admire the unsparing vision of Michael Haneke's films, and sometimes I think he's just bullying us. I felt that way at the beginning of Benny's Video when he showed the slaughter of a hog twice in succession. Later, when I knew why he did it, I felt more accepting. And yet, by the end of the film, when a sort of justice is done to his characters, who are both disturbed and disturbing, I felt nothing but a kind of resentment at being toyed with for 110 minutes. Haneke is a great manipulator, able to make you believe in his characters and the ghastly situations they put themselves in, but to what end? If that's an objection, it could probably be made of any number of great filmmakers, starting with Alfred Hitchcock, but why do I feel that in films like Benny's Video Haneke represents the decadence of an art form, and not what he seems to be trying to suggest: the decadence of our civilization?