The American Version

Remake Trailer
Original Trailer

This past weekend Michael Haneke's film "Funny Games" was just released to North American theatres. His film is a psychological thriller that dissects violence in the media using post-modern tricks and aesthetics. What is interesting about this film though is that it is actually a remake. In 1997, Haneke released an Austrian version of "Funny Games" in German. The film was released in North America but with English subtitles. What Haneke has produced now in 2008 is an exact shot-for-shot remake with American actors and no subtitles.

What makes this remake so interesting is that it causes so many people to ask 'why?' Looking back at past remakes, they have all been for artistic purposes or for translation purposes. For instance, Gus Van Sant did a shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and what it produced was an experiment in filmmaking. Using different actors, in a different era, but trying to recreate the film exactly to it's original caused a completely different experience. As an experiment, it does elevate the artistic nature of the film to a more 'high culture status', as Herbert Marcuse would say for its motives are not based on technological rationality. Gus Van Sant did not want to remake Psycho solely to make money as it had already been a successful English language classic. What Van Sant probably knew from remaking the film was that audiences would be divided by the corruption of a sacred film, and that would produce a lack of revenue.

However, if you look at an example of a remake like The Grudge, where Takashi Shimizu remade his own film for North American audiences, it was clearly to make more money. As the film had been in Japanese, producer Sam Raimi (who is the director of the Spiderman films, which were adapations, but that's a whole other can of worms!) saw the original film and realized it's potential so contacted Shimizu and helped him make a version that Americans would watch. This was clearly to make more money, as it shows elements of technological rationality. As well, the remake had cut out scenes from the original, was this an experiment to see if the film would work in English? It seems hardly plausible when the original could be watched with English subtitles. There's no elevation of the artistic nature.

But what's wrong with subtitles you may ask? Friedrich Kittler's rants about print culture may bring to mind the same issues with sub-titles. The data flow of dialogue in the films "have to pass through the bottleneck of the signifier" (Kittler 12). The dialogue is already a coded flow of information, which then has to be coded further for English speaking audiences. What we get is a lack of the signified, although the film presents images of the signified. The dialogue becomes the signifier and requires decoding by the audiences. When emotions don't match the sentences, we wonder where the meaning is? What the meaning is? How can it be found?

Now with Haneke's film "Funny Games" in consideration, did he remake this film to overcome the extra layers of codification for English speaking audiences? His film is already deeply rooted in meanings and messages, so for the audience to miss out on dissecting the coded content of the film they would miss out half of its experience. This seems to create a sense that his motives are innocent, for his film is already controversial and abrasive to an excess that will not appeal to the mass market of moviegoers. His audience will end up being comprised mostly of people that are already fans of his work, as I know that is my main reasoning for seeing this film.

Is it impossible to rule out that maybe Haneke did recreate this film to make money? His new version stars celebrity actors like Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Michael Pitt. These are all established actors that have done critically acclaimed roles, but you cannot deny their fame and ability to draw audiences for that. The film will now be talked about in magazines like Entertainment Weekly, People, Rolling Stones, etc, whereas the original 1997 version would have only received media coverage in magazines that cater to more high cultured audiences.

Now this makes you think of Silverstone's explanation of media as the texture of experience and the ubiquity of it. Maybe Haneke feels as though his film needs to be seen by American audiences, because of it's strong messages on violence in the media. Maybe he realized that the only way to have more people see his film was to have his film engage with more forms of media. It does make more sense when considering that Haneke's film dissects violence in the media.

The avant-garde components of "Funny Games" do tamper with communication, as Marcuse had talked about. *SPOILER* At the end of the film, when you feel as though the good guys have fought back and possibly won, the main villain picks up a remote control and rewinds the film then manages to change the events so that they still remain on top. This break of the 4th wall is very avant-garde, as it breaks the communication between the audience and the film. The audience, who thought they were going to be finally rewarded for their endurance of some truly torturous scenes by the victory of the protagonists are betrayed in the most demented way. This type of scene is supposed to be abrasively frustrating, and it's this type of scene that reaffirms the avant-garde nature of Haneke's film. Remaking an avant-garde film then engages with some truly post-modern ideas of high and low cultured art.