Reseñas de la crítica

On balance, not quite as suffocatingly claustrophobic as the first picture, but even those familiar with that masterpiece may find themselves sweaty-palmed with tension as Haneke's savagely uncompromising exercise in manipulation and cruelty so icily unfolds.

Haneke is fascinated by the effects of modern technology and the media on the human psyche, and his purpose here is to take a popular thriller plot and treat it in such an unbearable fashion that we come to question our own enjoyment of such things and the tastes of those who make them.

But this second Funny Games, in repeating itself so exactly - and moreover refusing any of the contemporary post-9/11 spin that another director might have wanted to add - breaks off the crust of commentary and lets us see Haneke's creepy situationist genius afresh: the creation of pure existential fear and turmoil for its own sake.

How odd though that a director of Haneke’s quality would want to waste his time in what seems like a pointless repetition, in the – misguided? – hope that a larger American audience will see his film. What’s more, having two highly recognisable actors in the central roles makes the story feel somewhat less real, and therefore less affecting. That said, the US version is (almost) as devastatingly powerful as the original, and it is certainly worth seeing if you missed it the first time round.

While the original film toyed with our expectations of genre convention, this one makes us examine our assumptions about actors. It's fascinating to watch Tim Roth and Naomi Watts debase themselves so thoroughly and unexpectedly, but their familiarity also lessens the unsettling, alien atmosphere that the first film achieved.

By breaking the usual story pattern of these films, by keeping the violence senseless, Haneke forces his audience to live with the violence they've seen. Further, he makes them more likely in the future to notice the violence in other movies, violence that usually gets forgotten once the moral order is restored through a conventional happy ending.

At least with the remade “Funny Games,” Mr. Haneke shows a certain kinship with someone like Eli Roth, whose “Hostel” movies have brought nothing but scorn from responsible critics. (If Mr. Haneke wanted to break into the American market, rather than take solace in the ambivalent embrace of the intelligentsia, he should have undertaken not a remake but a sequel.)

If anything, this shiny, new, Americanized take on Haneke's original themes is more effective, more visceral, and far more apparent in its intentions than the original.

You could make the case that Haneke deserves a measure of respect for showing us how pathetically dependent we are on that compact and its cathartic endings. You could, but I won’t, because Haneke’s assault on our fantasy lives is shallow, unimaginative, and glacially unengaged—a sucker punch without the redeeming passion of punk.

Haneke (Caché, The Piano Teacher) has captured lightning in a bottle once again; even with a new cast, a new language, and a decade’s distance from the original, the film’s hostile brilliance has not been muted by this uncanny facsimile.

The movie’s attempt to combine cool Brechtian remove with the highly realistic depiction of physical and psychological torture ultimately backfires on its auteur: The direct-address interludes come off as fatuous and hectoring, while our identification with the suffering family feels powerful and necessary.

The new version is very nearly the same film — with the same scary red credits and screaming-horror heavy metal — but it’s perhaps even more shocking to see a glossy star like Naomi Watts trussed up in duct tape.