Funny Games U.S.

The remake is something in cinema that is debatable. More often than not a remake is frowned upon and susceptible to negative criticism, simply because there is the hierarchy of the original. However, there are exceptions. The Thing and The Fly are in my opinion better than the originals, simply because they are greater achievements and all have a more personal directorial touch on them.

Remakes are also part of a trend. For example, The Ring; Dark Water and The Grudge were all part of a series of Eastern horror films that were remade for Western audiences, this trend of course is something that is still occurring with the remake of Oldboy that is currently in development. Although I haven’t seen the three aforementioned remakes I feel that what I can say to justify my refusal to watch them is that the spirituality, general eeriness and the sheer story-telling ability that these films posses will be lost in the translation from the Eastern to Western culture. This is not to say that the remakes will be by default significantly weaker than the Western remakes, such a generalisation would be a great misstep, rather that it could be argued that from such a cultural slide and transformation, the quality will be significantly reduced. In such examples, there’s also a certain degree of phenomenology to be recognised – I watched them first and enjoyed what I saw so much, that anything related to it afterwards cannot be matched. This perspective is also a misstep as there is no level of comparison from the original, it is simply a presumption.

A director remaking their own films though is something that is a rare occurrence. To my mind, there are two examples: Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Haneke. Hitchcock’s remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much is an interesting remake to mention, as the reasoning behind it is almost unknown. It has been noted (Stuart Y. McDougal in his essay The Director Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock Remakes Himself) that Hitchcock constantly remade his own work; often remaking transitions between shots. Examples that I can think of include the following: scenes in Vertigo and The Wrong Man for their uses of psychiatric hospitals, both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much; Psycho and Vertigo for their use of two narratives (think of this as two sections to the narrative), The Manxman and Vertigo for their use of attempted suicide via jumping into a river, the presence of birds as menace in the parlour scene of Psycho can also be linked to The Birds. There are also parallels between The Man Who Knew Too Much and North by Northwest in which the thieves force a character to be intoxicated and finally the sequence in The Thirty-Nine Steps can also be argued as being a remake of the Albert Hall sequence in The Man Who Knew Too Much. Although I may have run the risk of reading into these examples too much, it cannot help but be noticed that there was an obsessive side to Hitchcock and definitely a very passionate one.

Michael Haneke’s remake of Funny Games, on the other hand, is something much more curious. Not only did Haneke embark on remaking his own film, he remade it in another language and with another cast, something that can also be argued about Hitchcock’s two remakes. However, the crucial thing that separates Haneke and Hitchcock is that Haneke’s remake is an almost shot-by-shot remake, something that Hitchcock did not do. The point of making this connection is simply to establish that there is a drive within a small number of directors for perfection. These directors have found their happy medium in the form of genre and their auteurism, but are still driving to find perfection in the things that they know. This drive should not be considered as a weakness or laziness on their part, but rather a sense that they are striving to achieve the very highest quality of the things that they know.

Haneke’s remake is something of a curiosity though and the reasons why he remade the film may remain a mystery. To think about the reasons why this may have been done, it may be worthwhile looking at the themes and critical strands that the film explores. For example, the film has an outstanding critique of cinema and the media. This is typified in the way in which the fourth wall is broken and Michael Pitt’s character talks directly to the camera. The dialogue also makes references to TV characters like Tom and Jerry and Beavis and Butt Head. It also discusses cinematic language and at one point discusses narrative theory and exposition. Perhaps the most overt link to narrative exposition is the way in which Peter is killed and Paul rewinds with the TV remote what has happened and then changes the events so that Peter is not killed. Michael Pitt’s final stare into the camera also provides a certain sense of circular narrative, that everything is not going to be alright but the previous day’s events have come full circle and will simply occur again.

It was 10 years between Funny Games and Funny Games U.S. and although it is simply the same film, it cannot help but be felt that the film’s themes and notions of cinematic exploration have matured; developing a greater sense of achievement and essentially the film has a new target – the American audience. Although it is unclear where the film was aimed at first time round, it is quite clear where this one is aimed at, with the Hollywood norm being at the centre of the target.

As for Hitchcock, Haneke and the notion of the remake, it is something that is going to continually be developed and something that will continually be used. Remaking is a staple of the film industry, albeit one that may be frowned upon, but it will still be one that will characterise perfection. Haneke and Hitchcock aren’t too dissimilar in the way in which they both are masters at their own game. Hitchcock struggled for perfection and acceptance on a level that cannot quite be paralleled, but Haneke’s films are not far from it.