Holding Up A Shattered Mirror

When it comes to movie do-overs, the recklessly sexy Naomi Watts just cannot keep herself out of trouble. In remakes of “Ringu” (“The Ring”) and “King Kong,” she found herself stalked by, respectively, a monstrous spirit and a rampaging ape. If, as has been reported, she stars in an upcoming reworking of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” she will soon be facing an enraged avian army. But none of these ordeals, past or future, are enough to deter the much menaced Ms. Watts from appearing in yet another remake — the sinister and distressing “Funny Games,” a film in which she confronts the most dangerous creature of all: man.Naomi, peril, remake — so far, so familiar. But what makes this remake so different is the way that it is the same. The new “Funny Games” is simply the Austrian director Michael Haneke’s American version of his own 1997 German-language film. And it’s no Mulligan. The original “Funny Games” was profoundly and brilliantly disturbing, an unsettling, upsetting examination of human savagery and the spectacle that we like to make of it. It told the tale of the torment — relentless, remorseless, and just for the fun of it — of a vacationing family at the hands of Peter (Frank Giering) and Paul (Arno Frisch), two preppies with more than a touch of Leopold and Loeb about them. Almost all the physical violence was off-screen, but the intensity of the cruelty on display, and the forensic psychological skill with which it was wielded, made “Funny Games” a tour de force that was almost, but not quite, unbearable to watch. And it’s that “not quite” that’s the rub.Yes, Wim Wenders, the distinguished German director, walked out when the movie was shown at Cannes in 1997, but most people who have watched it have seen it through to its brutal conclusion. Some may even have enjoyed it. I didn’t, but I was fascinated, intrigued, and gripped, which I think, I hope, is something else. Of course, Mr. Haneke was not the first to ask awkward questions about how we react to media depictions of violence, but the clever and highly manipulative manner in which he did so was not the least of his film’s far-from-funny games. Throw in the extraordinary performances by the cast, and it is difficult to deny that the first “Funny Games” was some kind of masterpiece.So why remake it, and why remake it as a shot-for-shot re-creation of the original? The actors are different, they speak their lines in English, and the action has been transferred from Austria to America. But in almost every other way, the two films are identical. The rationale for the remake lies not only in the obvious lure of a wider audience, but also, more interestingly, in its location. Mr. Haneke clearly relished the idea of using a Hollywood studio (Warner Bros.) to inject his film into the American entertainment culture that, he claims, inspired it, but which it repudiates.That said, positioning “Funny Games” as a critique of a specifically American cinema may win Mr. Haneke the usual plaudits from the usual suspects, but it risks diluting its impact. To see this as a film solely “about America” (and I don’t think that Mr. Haneke truly does) is to divert it from the source of its appalling power as a commentary on humanity as a whole — a perspective that will, ironically, be enhanced for American viewers by virtue of the fact that the story is now presented in their own language. Watching “Funny Games” in subtitled German offered Americans the comforting possibility that it was merely an account of Teutonic beastliness, an all too familiar theme. To shoot it in English removes that alibi. Peter and Paul ensnare their victims. Mr. Haneke entraps his. There is nowhere to turn. This isn’t a film about Austrians; it is a film about us, all of us, wherever or whoever we are.In almost every other respect, there is little to choose between the two versions. If the first was a masterpiece, so is the second. When it comes to the principals, Tim Roth and Naomi Watts (as the tortured couple) do just fine, but never equal the depth of the late Ulrich Mühe (so compelling as the hero of “The Lives of Others”) or, even more notably, Susanne Lothar: Her portrayal of the crushed and broken wife is one of the most harrowing performances in modern cinema. On the other hand, as Peter and Paul, Brady Corbet and Michael Pitt manage to eclipse their Germanic predecessors, which is no small achievement.Floppy-haired, soft-spoken, and Locust Valley immaculate, these are the most well-mannered of sadists — Mengeles filtered through Choate, Berias groomed by Andover. Precisely, methodically, and, on the whole, most politely, they test, they probe, and then they tear apart a family just because, well, they can. Of the two, the diffident, pudgy, clumsy Peter (Mr. Corbet), his odd, off-kilter face punctuated with the lips of a Habsburg princeling, comes across as a stumblebum psychotic — as feeble, ultimately, as he is lethal. While some of his supposed weaknesses are themselves just another game, he is, in reality, little more than foil, stooge, and plaything for the more dominant Paul (Mr. Pitt). It is Paul, we come to discover, who is presiding over these games, both within the movie, and beyond. It is Paul who gives us a glimpse of the abyss.Or is it, more horrifying still, a look into a mirror?

Holding Up A Shattered Mirror

Holding Up A Shattered Mirror

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