Rating: 4/5
Criterion Challenge 2024 | 12/52 | First Films - watch a directorial debut
In 1987, Anna and Georg sit in the car as it runs through an automatic car wash. The camera sits in the backseat as the wash goes through its steps.
At 6 AM, the alarm goes off. Anna and Georg get up, put on their robes, and start their day.
Brush teeth. Wake up their daughter, Eva. Tie Oxfords. Feed fish. Make coffee. Remind Georg to wear his red sweater. Pack up the briefcase. Eat breakfast. Drop off Eva at school. Drop off Anna at her workplace. Go to Georg’s engineering job.
Anna writes to Georg’s family to give an update on her family. Everyone is busy. Eva’s health has improved after being in poor condition. Anna’s mother died. Her brother, Alexander, took it quite hard.
Eva lies about being blind to Anna. Anna later finds a newspaper in Eva’s room detailing how a family reconnected after a daughter became blind.
Alexander comes over for dinner. He cries. Anna cradles his head to console him. They watch TV together.
And so on. We revisit the family twice more, in 1988 and 1989.
Michael Haneke takes a news article he read and maps the imagined progression in a Chantel Aukerman-like banality, where the signals that something is wrong come from the dissolution of the family routine.
Like all of Haneke’s work I’ve seen, the camera is a forced participant, reticent to watch but unable to leave.
Even with knowledge of their every waking moment, the film reminds us we still don’t truly know this family. The reasons behind their actions remain unknown. The most we know are the consumer goods they’ve purchased.
Between scenes is a prolonged blackout of a couple of seconds. The remaining world exists in those seconds.
I despise the fish scene.