It can't be very common for a director to make two versions of the same film. Hitchcock did it with The man who knew too much, and Japanese horror Ju On: The Grudge was remade for a Western audience. Michael Haneke remade his 1997 German/French language version of Funny Games a decade later, this time in English, seemingly just to find a wider audience. It seems like an odd decision on his part, not only because the film gains nothing in it's by-the-numbers reincarnation, but he doesn't seem the type to pander to an audience or make his offerings with accessibility in mind. After all, he has made some of the coldest, least enjoyable films in cinema history. I am a huge fan of his work, he would be in my top 5 directors - I will run down my top 5 of his one day.
I watched the original about a year ago, and the remake this week, so I have been thinking about the pair. They are such direct remakes that to try and form a comparison is a rather fruitless endeavour. I would understand, although not support, if the remake was re-written to appeal to a more English sensibility (which is so often the way with traditional remakes) but it really played like a shot for shot clone of the first - meaning I'm struggling to find the point, at least one with artistic integrity.
It's not a cheap, lazy, westernised remake that we are all, sadly, used to. There's not much reason you wouldn't rate 2007's version if you don't rate 1997's version, although I would probably say that the 1997 version has a slightly more visceral feel. And although enough time had passed inbetween that I was unsure about the individual shot comparisons, I did think that the egg borrowing scene in the kitchen, the most memorable from the original, was cut differently in the remake. The kitchen scene of the original is classic Haneke - for minutes and minutes of minimal camera movement, he patiently builds tension through potentially innocent goings on. Technically speaking, the audience is shown more than the innocent party does - illustrating Hitchcock's famous definition of suspense.
I found that the two antagonists from the English version were a bit less chilling than the original performances - Arno Frisch was somehow more smiley. Admittedly it may have helped his cause that he was so inscrutable in Hanekes earlier film Benny's Video, a quality I thiught he carried across to Funny Games when I first saw it. All the pther performances are pretty interchangeable. I'm a big fan of Naomi Watts, who seems to have a penchant for remakes - as well as this, she starred in the English language Ring, a remake of the Japanese horror classic, and one of the greatest ever films, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001), itself a remake/expansion of his shorter version from two years prior.
If one were to think about effective use of long takes in films, the names Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson would crop up for sure, but Haneke is as much, if not more than, on par with them. He may even quietly be the king of long takes, just a different variety to Marty and PTA's more showy approach. He mostly uses static or seldom moving camera so perhaps his long takes seem less impressive than scenes from Goodfellas or Magnolia for instance. Saying that, in my opinion, the opening scene of Haneke's Code unknown, when the camera moves from one character meeting to the next on the street, is a wonderful example of long take control. Not to mention that filmmaking this way means the actors have to be really up to the task. Whereas most directors would be tempted to try to highlight crucial events or plot points through shot selection, editing or sound design, Haneke has always been one to simply show us his trademark harshness - with no cues or special presentation, which is seriously admirable.
I suppose it is inevitable that because in 2007, nothing remotely new was offered, it will always be thought of as the problematic younger sibling. I think the 1997 version is a little better due to the feel and performances, and much more preferable, due to its originality.
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