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in michael haneke’s 1997 film Funny Games an Austrian
family are imprisoned in their lakeside holiday home by two
mysterious young men and tortured, for no obvious reason
other than the viewer’s discomfort. Before its premiere ‘spiked’ the film by adding two nearly subliminal inserts, images
in Cannes, the film’s content was kept a strict secret, and of a masked woman and a cow: effectively a deliberate ‘flaw’,
Funny Games had a seismic effect on its first audiences, both expressly identifying the film as forgery.
because of its extremity and because of the directness of its Other filmmakers have followed this conceptual,
address to the viewer. Haneke’s intention was to deliver a stern detached approach to the remake. The most fetishistic
dose of corrective medicine to an audience that had become example is a now-forgotten remake by Wade Williams in 1992
complacently numbed in its responses to screen violence. of Detour, Edgar G. Ulmer’s classic no-budget 1945 film noir,
In Haneke’s latest film, a bourgeois American family are following the original script and starring the son of original lead
imprisoned in their lakeside holiday home by two mysterious Tom Neal (and allegedly using the very same car as Ulmer’s
young men… It is the same work again, or nearly. Titled Funny film). The closest example of this approach in the artworld
Games U.S., this is effectively a shot-by-shot copy of the original. is Pierre Huyghe’s 1995 Remake, a 16mm reenactment of
The two young men again wear white tennis gear and gloves; Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) that at 100 minutes is only
the dialogue is the same, but in English; even the layout of the 12 shorter than the original. Recasting the film with a group
house and grounds seems identical, as if Haneke had airlifted of pallid, enervated French actors, Huyghe perfectly copies
his original location across the Atlantic. Once more Haneke the form of the original but drains its emotive charge, so that
undermines the drama’s ostensible realism by ‘rewinding’ the Remake becomes a dispassionate enquiry into the nature
action on screen at a crucial point. However, the films do differ: of auteur signature: while following Hitchcock’s blueprint
Funny Games U.S. is marginally more mainstream-friendly religiously, while still resembling Rear Window moment by
than its predecessor, insofar as it stars two major international moment, it retains no traces of that elusive between-the-
names, Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, as the parents. frames presence that we identify as ‘Alfred Hitchcock’.
Several questions immediately come to mind. With In the artworld, such appropriation may open up critical
familiar star faces, can Funny Games U.S. possibly have perspectives on the activity of copying; in cinema, that is rarely
the same threatening charge as the original, and avoid the the case. The film industry simply has a habit – as it has since
taint of glamour? What of the surprise factor? Is it only the its origins – of devouring and recycling whatever product is
unsuspecting viewer, unaware of the original, rather than already available, because only so much new material can
Haneke’s faithful arthouse following, whom Funny Games U.S. be economically originated. That process has accelerated, in
actually addresses? But perhaps the most troubling question is a cinematic culture of advancing exhaustion: hence, over the
this: why, having already made a film as precise and demanding last few years, Hollywood’s systematic working-through of the
as Funny Games, should Haneke submit to making it again? recent Japanese and Korean horror canons, from The Ring
This is not the first time that directors have reprised (1998/2002) onwards.
their own work. Dutch director George Sluizer remade his One cheeky satirical comment on remake culture comes

tautly disturbing psychological thriller The Vanishing (1988) in Michel Gondry’s new farce Be Kind Rewind, in which two
in the US in 1993, replacing a chillingly cerebral villain with buffoons accidentally erase the contents of a video store and
a buffoonish Jeff Bridges, and an extremely black final twist make amends by using cheap props to remake films on VHS
with an offensively upbeat coda. Recently, young Georgian- for rental: what they call ‘sweded’ versions of Ghostbusters
born director Géla Babluani signed up to remake his own (1984), Rush Hour 2 (2001) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989).
2005 thriller 13 Tzameti, while Hong Kong’s Pang Brothers Gondry doesn’t actually go to the trouble of remaking these
are embarking on a new version of their 1999 thriller Bangkok films in their entirety, nor do his heroes. They actually produce
Dangerous, to star Nicolas Cage. You can only wish them no-budget DIY parodies that never last more than 20 minutes,
good luck, and hope they don’t get bored, or sabotage their but are supposedly better than the real thing.
own careers, as Sluizer did. Gondry’s film is strictly disposable, and unfortunately has
But few aside from Haneke can be imagined the implication that if films can be remade with junk, perhaps
remaking their own work quite so fastidiously. The obsessive they were only ever a step away from junk themselves. At
scrupulousness of Funny Games U.S. reveals the film’s Deitch Projects in New York this month, Gondry has created
affinities with a type of project that stands out as an anomalous a Be Kind Rewind installation, reconstructing the film’s video
subgenre within the field of remakes – the ‘conceptual’ remake, store and inviting visitors to film their own ‘sweded’ movies.
if you like. In 1998, Gus Van Sant remade a film that seemed Much fun will be had, and much YouTube footage generated,
more impervious to copying than most, because the original but ultimately there’s only one production one would really like
hinged so much on surprise: Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Van to see emerging from Gondry’s installation. That would be a
Sant undertook the project almost as a wilful exercise in futility. shot-by-shot ‘sweded’ Be Kind Rewind itself, exactly the same
, 2008, dir Michel Gondry. © 2008. © Junkyard Productions LLC
Taking it as read that everyone knew each twist in the story by length as the original, and including precise remakes of the
heart, Van Sant delivered a shot-by-shot remake that derived remakes within the film. And if Gondry really had the nerve,
its singularity from glaring differences of style: from vivid you hope he’d invite Michael Haneke to do the honours.
colour rather than black-and-white, and from counterintuitive
Be Kind Rewind
casting (Vince Vaughan in the Anthony Perkins part). He also Funny Games U.S. opens 4 April in the UK. Michel Gondry,
Be Kind Rewind, until 15 March, Deitch Projects, New York,
www.deitch.com
Still from
Mixed Media_moving image.indd 129 5/2/08 13:21:56
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