Amour (by Michael Haneke)

He's in a sentimental mood, y'all:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/nov/04/michael-haneke-amour-director-interview

Above all I'm looking forward to seeing Emmanuelle Riva on the big screen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/nov/08/emmanuelle-riva-amour-michael-haneke

There's a good interview w/ Haneke in the new Sight and Sound, where he talks about moving from a Brechtian style to a Chekovian style. As my tastes run more towards the bleak, think I preferred his earlier nihilistic ones to his new 'humanism', but am still looking forward to seeing this

Michael Haneke's Cocoon.

That interview sounds better than the one I linked to. Haneke has been v clear that he will not give easy answers, and it was weak of the interviewer to throw back his "cinema is a dialogue". Haneke doesn't want to peddle facile intepretations for a journalist to moralise over at the end of his piece, and I think that's fair.

his best film?

emmanuelle riva crushes it itm

Loved it. Have read/heard some truly head-smacking "interpretations" already.

I would like to hear these theories (which I'm guessing mainly relate to the last ten minutes.) I think it would be fairly easy to offer a reading of this film as a ghost story.

Saw it yesterday morning, an insanely early screening at my local Cineworld (10.30am). Loved it, of course; in fact, I think the sentimentality has been somewhat overstated, for fairly obvious reasons - parts of this are as tough to sit through as anything else in Haneke's work, and there are couple of moments where It feel as if you've JUST been punched in the gut (an effect achieved by the intimacy of the setting, the meticulousness of the performances, the mise-en-scene - and the incredible sound design where every wheezy breath has been captured.) Haneke's mastery seems to extend to making an incredible number of 'right' choices when it comes to shot selection, montage, camera movement, the use of close-ups that create such vivid intimacy. The film is brilliant on the routine of washing, feeding, caring for the old and incapacitated, and all the paraphernalia that that involves - adapted beds, chairs, baths. Already, it feels like a film, an experience, that will stay with me for a long time (not least for the echoes of my own parents and their struggles in old age - I'm sure many viewers will find sad, moving reminders of their own experiences with elderly relatives.) Early on we are a given a long-duration shot of Anne and Georges watching a performance at the theatre, and of course this is another Haneke film about the power and difficulty of looking - of looking clear-eyed at the indignities and private moments of long-long-term relationships that inevitably end in pain and loss.

Must watch HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR

Thx, really look forward to watching this once friend is able to come along.

Ward - would be good to read your thoughts on Hiroshima Mon Amour sometime. Slightly surprised you haven't seen it.

I'm expecting the same ol' junk

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/amour/6577

ha, i'm super fascinated to see if this will be good enough to convert you, morbs

Can't decide which way death snapping into new focus for Morbs might sway his take.

that Slant review is sooo stupid - seems to be criticising Haneke for making the audience identify with his characters, or find things in the narrative that resonate with their own lives and feelings - which is what we go to the movies for, at least some of the time?

On a five sec skim these seem like the usual complaints from a Haneke review.

Convert me? I like about 3 MH films (Code Unknown, Time of the Wolf, Cache w/ reservs). Alas he like Tarantino is an artist with minor gifts whose assholism has apparently usurped his aesthetics.

I see a lotta films about Death, just usu not in neon letters that shoot poison.

(never bothered to see White Ribbon)

Surely you can attest that assholism is a gift unto itself.

don't look a gift hole in the mouf

I am not generally a Heneke fan for the reasons Morbs mentions but I liked this a lot.

how's the old bird?

https://twitter.com/Michael_Haneke

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
playin ‘who has the most parms dorz’ with terruns malick gets so borin. im sick of winnin evrytime lol #teamhaneke

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
jst hurd that amour got no nominayshuns in the #sagawards but marigold hotel did!!1! mor like #saggyawards lol

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
aparentlee i jst wons an Las Angelies critix award for best picture!!1!! @brettratner can u pick it up 4 me wen ur out of hooters lol

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
wot did evry1 think of the new terruns malick film? o thats rite, it still doesnt hav a releese date. wondr wot that means lol #teamhaneke

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
i just got id'd for a bottul of bacardi!!!!1! lol #stillgotit

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
happy haneke lol

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
@darrenaronofsky jst saw ur text. sorry am busy 2nte but we shud defintely go 2 a hospital and pretend 2 b doktors soon tho lol

Convert me? I like about 3 MH films (Code Unknown, Time of the Wolf, Cache w/ reservs). Alas he like Tarantino is an artist with minor gifts whose assholism has apparently usurped his aesthetics.

ty for clarifying this, i'd thought you were more across the board about him. i guess i am waiting on a road to demascus moment in which he is redeemed & seen anew. yr picks are his best, & the white ribbons not crucial, so.

This run of films (w/Piano Teacher) are his agreed best. Doesn't sound like you need conversion as the Austrian films could be seen as prep for that run.

The Tarantino comparison doesn't make any sense - plenty of filmmakers come across as arseholes (Godard, etc.) That has nothing to do w/aesthetics.

If you had said they both had an unhealthy interest in a certain strain of violent cinema that aims to discomfort and that is offputting, or that VHS cassetes are lame (video is a device used in at least three Haneke films; Tatantino was a video store guy and looks through film in that way it seems...this is as much thinking I've done on Tarantino) then I could begin but they have nothing to do with one another, when you look at the films they deploy violence in completely diff ways for a start.

(Ah I've just seen the Tarantino thread...)

https://twitter.com/Michael_Haneke

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
playin ‘who has the most parms dorz’ with terruns malick gets so borin. im sick of winnin evrytime lol #teamhaneke
Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
jst hurd that amour got no nominayshuns in the #sagawards but marigold hotel did!!1! mor like #saggyawards lol

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
aparentlee i jst wons an Las Angelies critix award for best picture!!1!! @brettratner can u pick it up 4 me wen ur out of hooters lol

Michael Haneke ‏@Michael_Haneke
wot did evry1 think of the new terruns malick film? o thats rite, it still doesnt hav a releese date. wondr wot that means lol #teamhaneke

― your damn bass clarinet (Eazy), Thursday, December 13, 2012 12:43 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

7000 followers.

Haneke's biggest asshole movies were pre-2000 iirc.

I like the idea of Funny Games

If anyone detects his usual assholism in Amour, let me know, 'cause I didn't.

funny games is sorta having your cake and eating it, and then having your cake and eating it again

The White Ribbon wasn't an asshole move, it was a boring art chic move.

there is more than one way to be an asshole.

It wasn't as overt as w/ FP, but White Ribbon still had an asshole streak for sure. Esp in the way it manufactured cruelty to the benefit of Hanake's ends.

every time I read about what this guy does I think "no matter how good his next move is, I have seen enough of this guy's deal to last me a lifetime"

funny games is sorta having your cake and eating it, and then having your cake and eating it again

haha this is so OTM, if he'd pulled up at any point I would have loved "Funny Games" but dude was willing to torpedo his movie to hammer home his point, which had the unfortunate side-effect of undermining his point

I said this before but anyone talking about Haneke without having seen "Code Unknown" should see that un-cruel and perfect and beautiful movie and re-evaluate

"Code Unknown" was my first MH movie. Went after reading a one-paragraph review in the Chicago Reader, knowing nothing else. Loved it.

The White Ribbon was great: most good art film is chic!

Like all I've seen apart from maybe his Kafka adaptation - but even then I'd watch it again for Ulrich Mühe's performance.

Reading this thread I realise that 71 Fragments of Chronology of a Chance is perhaps my favourite. Done in Code Unknown-type tableaux form (there is never enough cinema like this btw) but yes lots of assholism.

Come in for the chic but stay for the asshole, basically...

I like the idea of Funny Games

i bet you do!

Code Unknown is incredibly powerful and fresh.

It's probably in my all time top ten

wd love to know if DJP sat through both versions of Funny Games, or show him the first if he only saw the Watts one

oh l'ammoooooooooooooour
broke my heart now I'm achin for you

Pretty sure this is not an adaptation of the Erasure song, though given its gut-wrenching assault it seems like the sort of tune Haneke would put on the soundtrack to make you feel terrible for enjoying it.

Loved Code Unknown, pretty much everything else I've seen by Haneke makes me say fuck this guy. And then he does something like remake Funny Games in the most "don't you see?" way possible, and it makes me say fuck this guy even more.

Agree with the 3 morbs cited as the best reasons not to ever dismiss him out of hand. Plus this one too now, though I'm not sure it's up to the same level as the others.

I saw the original

The original was the worst Haneke movie I've ever seen except for Benny's Video.

Sort of wonder if the problem wasn't Arno Frisch.

Of course, he's supposed to be repugnant in both movies.

do you guys like Bruno Dumont

Liked L'Humanite when it was hot, loathed Twentynine Palms with a red hot fury.

The Piano Teacher IS the only MH film I've seen that's about as bad, but at least it made me laugh a couple times.

So it's pianists you hate.

naaah, I am fond of Chico Marx and you

Morbs what did you think of Strawdogs?

Peckinpah's? Saw it once probably 20 years ago. Problematic, disturbing, worth discussing.

Yeah. Its been 4-5 since I've seen it.

Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs": C or D? (SPOILERS!!)

V interestng dicussion w/a few echoes here - who is the enemy within and out there, who is nice or nasty.

Just picked up the new Sight&Sound, and our old pal Mark Cousins has a good piece on the use of space and the idea of 'territory' in Amour (he draws a a useful comparison w/ Polanski's use of interior space in Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant - both Haneke and Polanski are meticulous planners and anti-improvisation, of course.) Cousins also writes:

"The wife is assertive but, as her body dies, the husband becomes sovereign. And what do we in the film world call sovereignty? We call it authorship. The man in Amour is the author of his wife's dying, and many of the events that lead up to (or down to) it too. In a way, he's the filmmaker, shuffling around, creating rules and controlling events in a studio space."

chasing pigeons

thought this was fantastic

I'm sure anyone who has gone through something similar with a parent will find this very accurate. Two things in particular with my own mom: the not-eating, and the continual, unspecified discomfort/pain. I didn't find anything in here that was the least bit cruel or exploitive; it seemed like a very compassionate film to me.

Having said that, and fully understanding why it's something that will greatly affect many people who see it, I felt a little on the outside the whole way through. I've been posting about Six Feet Under elsewhere, and there's been stuff in that that has moved me a lot more. I also thought about Frederick Wiseman's Near Death and Alan King's Dying at Grace--they might have got in the way a bit.

The two leads deserve any and all awards they might get.

My parents had the same names as these two characters, my mom died last summer, and I was unmoved. Fuck this cynical movie.

Don't know what you're complaining about exactly. How is it cynical? The best Haneke movie I've seen. The oppressiveness he mitigates with the force and intelligence of Jean-Louis Trintingant, who deserves a nomination more than Riva. The second time the damn pigeon appeared I thought Haneke had lost his mind, and he's not up to the ambiguity of the ending (expecting ambiguity from Haneke is like expecting pratfalls from Bergman), but these are flyspecks on a good movie.

Endemic to Haneke's dry, ratchet-turning movies is the anticipation of an Inevitable Awful Event—let us call it the "IAE"—an event in which the incipient horror of the human condition pops out from behind the veneer of civilization, an event that the veteran Haneke viewer understands, upon going in, is part of the contract. The IAE breaks the brittle surface of Haneke's style, and the bracing plunge after the crack of the ice delivers a harsh lesson

this could not be more off the money re Amour. The Incipient Horror of the Human Condition is made most clear early in the film when Riva refuses to join Trintingnant for a nightcap.

otm, i actually kinda loved this (and am on record as not being down with haneke's usual thing)

er, alfred otm, that is

Yeah I adored this. It was impossible for me to not feel the echoes of watching my mom and grandmother pass away, but I didn't feel the supposed cruelty of it at all. It just felt honest, and very much a love story.

I want my promotional pillowcase

http://24.media.tumblr.com/d1b436768788c7c7c1caae1843d3a56c/tumblr_mfq4x533vX1rwpn15o2_250.jpghttp://www.corbisimages.com/images/Corbis-42-19676472.jpg?size=67&uid=f1700ea4-9ff7-4d39-8d19-67de5a7e2c2b

These two actors aren't so bad

I'm just gonna look at old photos of trintignant and riva all night I think.

saw this twice in the theater within a few days. having seen quite a few of hanneke's previous films and hated no small percentage of them, i spent much of the first viewing standoffishly expecting sadism and dreading some gut-punching IAE (is he gonna squash the pigeon or what?). kind of wrecked the film for me. second time around, i was much less defensive, and it seemed more tender than cruel, though definitely both. would up loving it. easily my favorite MH film.

hanneke

Hors Satan => film of 2013!!! YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST!

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, January 8, 2013 1:23 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM!

When Hors Saran came out on DVD here, I was shocked to see it described as starring "the late" David Dewaele. Shocking.

http://24fpsverite.com/news/david-dewaele-un-seignor-miserable/

Didn't know that either Alba, thank you for posting that. It's an incredible performance - so much sadness in his eyes.

Just read a passage in Proust that strongly reminded me of a scene in Amour - I wonder if Haneke was consciously referencing it (Proust is describing the last days of his dying grandmother, Madame Amedee, and the ministrations of their servant Francoise):

"By dint of repeatedly asking her whether she would like her hair done, Francoise ended up persuading herself that the request had come from my grandmother. She armed herself with brushes, combs, eau de Cologne, a wrapper. "It can't hurt Madame Amedee," she said, "if I just comb her hair; nobody's ever too weak to be combed." In other words, one is never too weak for another person to be able, for her own satisfaction, to comb one's hair. But when I came into the room I saw between the cruel hands of Francoise, as blissfully happy as though she were in the act of restoring my grandmother to health, beneath aged straggling tresses which scarcely had the strength to withstand the contact of the comb, a head which, incapable of maintaining the position into which it had been forced, was rolling about in a ceaseless whirl in which sheer debility alternated with spasms of pain."

That's brilliant!

Happy End is coming out more widely next week:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/happy-end-welcome-departure-michael-haneke?utm_content=buffer8b299&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I caught the preview screening and I half-agree with the review, in the sense that this is like a bunch of outtakes from various Haneke films that gradially come together. Much of the concept is a re-hash of Hidden (and that all goes way back to Benny's video), with continuity from Amour (The Trintignant-Huppert father-daughter r/ship). This is a bit like Elle at times in its set-up (you could argue that film is what Haneke would make if he had the balls for low-grade eurotrash and fun), but what Verhoven wouldn't do is the Georges-Eve relationship. The scene where they talk in the room after breakfast is one of the strongest scenes you'll see all year, and sorta catches you by surprise a bit (I watched A Nos Amours recently and its reminiscent of Pialat-Sandrine late-night conversation in its no-bullshit approach...saying what has to be said between two people, as hard as that might be).

Its a minor thing but I found myself laughing really hard with this film at times. Think that's a first. I don't know whether he'll make another film again (he is 75) so this might be a good way to go. Hope I'm wrong and there's more.

he seems pretty robust for a man in his 70s. I'm sure he's got a few more to go. looking forward to seeing this. if there's anyone ready to LOL at a Haneke film it's me. I love him.

& i think we can safely disregard about 90% of ILX stupidity re any Haneke film.

...which can be summed up in a good Glasgow saying: "You're not often right but you're wrong again"

I like that saying. it me rly.

i liked this a lot and thought it was lol funny as well. it's kind of strange the way H has trained you to watch his previous films so that you for e.g. scan static wide shots for clues and although it is, in a sense, a bit of a rework of previous tropes it's not that kind of film at all. there's no pattern. it's quite free and loosely structured. maybe more could or should have been done with the wedding dinner scene, like a performance artist acting like a gorilla, for example /jk

Maybe in the next one.

the seat behind me after Happy End (for real)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4okt44j6ffwv5jz/IMG_0218.jpg??raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4okt44j6ffwv5jz/IMG_0218.jpg?raw=1

still can't understand the laziness about starting a new thread for a new film by a worthless auteur

you think they deserve a new thread per film but are worthless?

No need to start a thread for every single new film. You've seen the stories about bitcoin, every new transaction kills trees.

Happy End specifically references Amour at one point, so it makes sense to revive this thread.

it's quite free and loosely structured

Yes, I really liked this aspect; Haneke brilliant as ever at suggesting other stories behind the stories, things unsaid, secrets kept from the audience and perhaps even from the auteur.

Yeah mentioned the continuities above but since Morbs hates Amour...I think where I disagreed with the S&S rev is that Amour is probably my favorite of his films from the last decade, and it's a pretty unique depiction of a certain phase in a relationship. Something I will return to again whenever I get to a re-watch.

i wasn't quite sure what happened with Pierrot at the dinner - does his mother break his finger or what? i was also confused by Pierrot's karaoke performance - what happens at the end of that?

This film was very funny. I think the sight of isabelle huppert in anything now automatically makes me ready to laugh. Her main thing seems to be often that she is too busy to be in whatever film she is supposed to be acting in. Often it feels like she is just trying to finish the conversation the other actor is trying to have with her so she can get her coat and leave. I saw her acting in a terrible play once and she was not nearly so funny as she is in this. She's gotten much better as well. I rewatched La Ceremonie not too long ago and keeps jumping about the place making funny faces.

There's shot near the beginning where IH is driving along the security fences in Calais on the mobile phone, along a very modern motorway that made me think of this line from an interview with Deleuze where he says "Control is not discipline. You do not confine people with a highway. But by making highways, you multiply the means of control. I am not saying this is the only aim of highways, but people can travel infinitely and ‘freely’ without being confined while being perfectly controlled. That is our future." I kept thinking about this all the way through the film, the distinction between these different regimes of power, discibline for refugees control for the vapid bourgeoisie. The security cameras which are watching the site (during the collapse) and the CCTV along the fences become are mirrored by the highways, mobile phones, email and social media. I think this was a major theme of the film, the industriousness of the middle classes in making their own prisons. Like John Lewis.

I could have done without the karaoke scene. That was pretty tiresome.

I kept thinking of Muriel by Alain Resnais which has many similarities but is more interesting and much funnier.

This is probably the best "new release" I saw this year.

i wasn't quite sure what happened with Pierrot at the dinner - does his mother break his finger or what? i was also confused by Pierrot's karaoke performance - what happens at the end of that?

Unexpected!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/31/michael-haneke-kelvins-book-10-part-english-language-tv-series

noted

Recommend me some Michael Haneke

Sorry, didn't see that one. Could be his World on a Wire!

psyche

Hmm. This Guardian Film article ranks Amour as Haneke's best movie.

Michael Haneke films – ranked!

I've only seen four of his films, and not the best-known ones; but 71 Fragments... is very good and even has some propulsion to it.

You knew that Haneke's career wasn't going to take off in the US when he refused the obvious subtitle for his remake of Funny Games: Sadistic Boogaloo.

I think the sight of isabelle huppert in anything now automatically makes me ready to laugh. Her main thing seems to be often that she is too busy to be in whatever film she is supposed to be acting in.