Michael haneke

Although he was born in Munich on March 23, 1942, Michael Haneke has the nationality of his mother, the Austrian actress Beatrix von Degenschild. And it is that the family cinematographic vocation comes to him, since his father, the German Fritz Haneke, was a director. After his parents’ divorce, Haneke spent his childhood with his mother’s family, in the countryside near Wiener Neustadt, a city in Austria.

He studied philosophy, psychology and drama at the University of Vienna to later dedicate himself to film criticism. From 1967 he switched to editing and scriptwriting for a television channel in southern Germany. In that country he began an intense activity as a theater director. He makes his directorial debut with The Seventh Continent , which was intended for television but was released in theaters after it was rejected for its harshness by all the networks. This interesting drama narrates the breakdown of a family formed by a married couple with a young daughter.

His second work had more repercussions, the very harsh El vídeo de Benny , a chilling declaration of intent where the hallmarks of Haneke’s cinema are present, his fascination for images, sounds and violence, and which deals with his favorite themes: isolation, the comfortable life of the upper class and family relationships. The most interesting film from Haneke’s first stage is, without a doubt, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance , about lack of solidarity in society, which describes the journey of various characters united around a shooting at a bank branch.

But Haneke achieved international recognition with Funny Games (1997) , an unusual thriller that left no one indifferent. Two young psychopaths lock up a married couple and their son in their country house for no apparent reason, to subject them to all kinds of harassment. The film suggests more than shows, a violence that for the two disturbed is a kind of game hardly bearable. It uses traps typical of some thrillers, with the difference that they do not benefit the protagonists, but rather the psychopaths, who are capable of even rewinding the film to leave their victims frustrated.

Haneke himself directed the American remake a decade later, with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth . Curiously, it was an absolute carbon copy of the original, but with other actors.

After adapting one of the greats of literature in The Castle (by Franz Kafka ) , Haneke surprised the public with Code Unknown , which, like the aforementioned 71 fragments , interweaves the dramas of various characters, this time from a neighborhood in Paris . It is a film devoid of violence, with more content than other of his works, again about the lack of communication and the lack of solidarity in society.

But it wouldn’t take long for Haneke to resume his facet as ‘screen terrorist’, with The Pianist , with Isabelle Huppert playing the least recommended piano teacher in the history of cinema, fond of sadomasochism and sexual perversions. A sequence of self-harm in a bathtub, and a revenge with some crystals could be included in the anthology of the hardest images ever seen on a screen.

Right after, he partially flopped with the little-known Time of the Wolf , which is a disaster movie in which it is unknown what disaster has happened. His biggest impact was the hypnotic exercise in Caché style , for which he won the best director award at Cannes. A popular television presenter receives a videotape that someone has recorded inside his own house.

The Cannes Film Festival has awarded Haneke the Palme d’Or at Cannes for The White Ribbon , a black and white film very different from the rest of his filmography. In fact, it takes place in a Lutheran community that looks like something out of a Dreyer film, where a new teacher arrives on the eve of World War I. The author’s typical considerations on the genesis of violence are present.