As previously ranted about, I despise unnecessary remakes of movies, and am essentially of the opinion that every remake is unnecessary, with few exceptions. What I hate the most about remakes (aside from the fact that they assume we are all dolts who can't watch stuff in black and white or read subtitles, and aside from the fact that the remake phenomeon is indicative of Hollywood's unwillingness/inability to make anything original other than a morning turd) is that they strip away the original intention of the director and assume that story is everything to a movie. They also seriously alter the original film by replacing actors who are relativley unknown, either by virtue of being foreign or by virtue of being from another era, with stars as familar to us as our own families. Okay, yes, granted, we can of course "know" these old/foreign actors, but the distance of geography or time adds something to a movie, making it easier to truly appreciate the stuff we don't appreciate when we watch a Hollywood blockbuster. As fine of an actor as some big Hollywood star may be (and I can't think of many I think are even particularly good), it is very difficult to tell because we know too much about them and their personas become inseparable from the role they are supposed to be playing. That's why it's called a "star vehicle." And it seems to be in the very nature of the remake that it routinely feature exactly these type of stars. I guess the kind of lazy-ass who wants to remake a movie is the kind of lazy-ass who doesn't want to think too much about casting, just making money.
So imagine my happy surprise today as I discovered that one of my favorite directors, Michael Haneke (previously glorified here), is remaking his own foreign language masterpiece, Funny Games, for an English-language audience. Oh man, this movie is so awesome, and so brutal, and probably wouldn't get remade by an American studio anyway because the brutality of it is so cerebral. It's about a home invasion in which two overprivileged little fuckers take a nice, normal family hostage at their vacation home and (spolier alert!) psychologically and physically torture them before killing all of them. Turns out they did the same with the neighbors, too. The conciet is not altogether unfamiliar, but what makes the movie so great is that Haneke isn't simply entertaining us by showing us a scary story - he's actually torturing the audience too. This is the most common thing you will hear about Haneke and it is spot-on, particularly in the case of Funny Games. It lulls you along with what should be really scary, harrowing fare but which is merely entertaining as you have seen something resembling it a hundred times before in horror movies and thrillers. Then, Haneke pulls the rug out from under you and makes you, the viewer, a part of the action. The killers start manipulating the actual film istelf, not just the story line, and even talk to the audience. All of a sudden you are chillingly aware of how numbed you have become to the horrific. How it's just popcorn to you, and it shouldn't be. It doesn't hurt that it's also a great movie, well acted and fantastically written and paced.
So yes, I am okay with this remake. The cast makes me more than okay with it. Tim Roth (where has he been? i have definitely missed him) plays the patriarch. Naomi Watts plays the matriarch. I didn't think much of her until I saw Mulholland Drive. She does fear and desperation better than most, I think, and she kind of looks like a real person. My favorite piece of casting, though, is Michael Pitt as the far more clever and sadistic of the two killers, the undisupted leader who often seems to be torturing his sidekick as much as his victims, and Brady Corbet as the slow, picked-on sidekick. I really like both of these young actors. Michael Pitt did the heartless privileged youth thing to perfection in Bully (another must-see - the best Larry Clark movie, if you ask me), and Brady Corbet did the easily-led loser sidekick to the ammoral sexy guy equally well in Mysterious Skin (another out of control awesome movie, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is amazing in it...love him...).
Bring it on, Haneke! I would of course rather that you make another amazing original movie, but whatever. This I can live with.
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