Why does Michael Haneke hate American cinema?
Bleak. Unforgiving. Sick. These are all words that have been used to describe the work of Michael Haneke, and when looking at the many twisted instalments to his filmography, it’s easy to understand why. All of his films tend to lean towards subjects that are perverse and taboo, commenting on the darkness that exists within all of us and our collective lack of empathy through his use of extreme violence. Haneke is never afraid to test the audience and push us to our limits, always going to the place we don’t want to see and turning the mirror inward for us to reflect on our complicity with tragedy and evil.
Whether it be his earlier work of ‘Benny’s Video’ in which a teenager murders a schoolgirl, completely indifferent to the pain he’s causing as a result of the media he consumes and his desensitisation to violence, with Haneke drawing parallels between our own relationship to the news and global suffering that is packaged and sold as ‘entertainment’. We also see this in Funny Games, with two men dressed in innocent all-white tennis outfits as they embark on a torture spree, trapping a German family in their holiday home as they play increasingly sick ‘games’ with them, with many references from Haneke to white privilege and the exploitation of tragedy for our viewing pleasure.
His unflinching and demanding gaze is a way of confronting us with the part we play in the tragedy that exists in our own world. Haneke almost makes us feel guilty for even watching his work – how could we possibly be intrigued by a story that is so sadistic? How are we able to separate between these tragedies in a way that some are meant to be for entertainment and some that we detach ourselves from when we see them reported on the news? Haneke shows these moments in such an explicit way to highlight this very moral conundrum, a way that isn’t welcomed by all audiences.
Some of the work created within the American film landscape has been criticized for the opposite issue of sugar-coating and embellishing the truth. When asked about the influence of American entertainment on his work, Haneke dismissed it as cultural imperialism, saying: “I hate films that try to make me more stupid than I am, and there are a lot. But I must admit I don’t go that often to the cinema. In the 60s and 70s, I went almost every day, but not anymore.”
In comparison to European cinema and the work of Haneke, the American film market doesn’t even come close. While some American producers would be afraid of including drawn-out torture scenes, uncomfortable on-screen relationships and non-crowd-pleasing endings, Haneke is unafraid of going to these dark corners and makes a point of relishing in these corners and making the idea of entertainment as a whole, a subversive subject. While the old Hollywood classics favour fairy-tale endings and non-offensive stories, Haneke intends to offend. In fact, this is his benchmark of a good piece of work.
While we’ve seen some more daring filmmaking coming from the States over the years, there are still few filmmakers who have twisted the knife as far as Haneke. The likes of Sean Baker and Kelly Reichardt have rebelled in their own way by critiquing the American dream, which is, fairly abject. In Wendy and Lucy and The Florida Project, they choose to showcase the more relatable tragedies that live next door to us, with the latter even finishing with an abrupt and jarring sequence that is Baker’s interpretation of the ‘Hollywood ending’, highlighting Hollywood’s tendency to ignore the reality of these stories for the sake of staying within our own safety net.
Given the constraints of the American distribution scene and their ability to ‘play it safe’, it’s understandable why a director as determined and relentless in his vision would be averse to the conventionally quite tame characteristics of American cinema. However, not everyone is brave enough to go where Haneke takes his audience, which makes his work even more impressive. While others would prefer the Hollywood ending, Haneke punishes us for expecting this and teaches us an unexpected lesson along the way.
