The Haneke Trilogy

Throughout his career, Michael Haneke has demonstrated himself to be a provocative filmmaker prepared not only to tackle difficult and controversial subjects that challenge the viewer, but also willing to experiment with the form of cinema by refusing to conform to the demands and trickery of conventional filmmaking techniques, adopting a distanced, neutral approach on the part of the filmmaker’s assertions and pushing the onus of interpretation upon the viewer. These characteristics are already evident in the first three films Haneke made in Austria between 1989 and 1994 – a trilogy of films that reveal the cracks in modern society that push vulnerable individuals to commit unspeakable acts of violence.

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The Seventh Continent (1989)


Michael Haneke’s first feature film for theatrical release is a fully accomplished film that already displays many of the themes, techniques and shock values that would become very familiar in the director’s subsequent works. Following the lives of a seemingly normal middle-class family over three years, Haneke’s film sees the Schober family deliberately and methodically destroy all the trappings of the modern, consumerist society in a quite brutal and shocking manner.

Read the full review of The Seventh Continent DVD here.

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Benny’s Video (1992)


Michael Haneke’s second feature film is a natural follow-up to the disquieting portrait he depicted of the bourgeois family in The Seventh Continent. A young teenage boy, obsessed with horror videos and violent imagery, acts out and records on video a horrifying act of violence he has seen on the screen with a young girl he has just met, to the incomprehension of his mother and father.

Read the full review of Benny’s Video DVD here.

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71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance (1994)



Following on from themes presented in his first two films, Michael Haneke’s 71 Fragments Of A Chronology of Chance widens his scope and view of society, while expanding and developing his filmmaking technique. The film again centres on an act of senseless violence, this time recounting the killing of three people in a Viennese bank, following the lives of a number of people who will ultimately become involved in the event through a series of fragmented scenes.

Read the full review of the 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance DVD here.

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All three films in the trilogy show Haneke experimenting with technique and refining his cinematic language to find the most truthful way of presenting events – not leading the viewer to accept a conventional structure where the film has a message and then manipulating scenes, characters and actions to meet those predefined expectations. Often scenes are left ambiguous, sometimes apparently irrelevant, but they should always leave the viewer room to make up their own mind and apply their own values – or even better, challenge them to actively question their own values and the expectations of what they are accustomed to simply blindly accepting.

It’s a risky technique which can often leave the viewer confused or feeling they have completely missed something in the narrative, and it’s not always successfully applied by the director either. Each of the three films here flirts with ambiguity and indirectness around a scene of shockingly senseless violence to varying degrees of success. Benny’s Video is perhaps a little too simplistic and direct in its correlation between on-screen violence and the actions of a desensitised youth who imitates what he sees. 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance goes in the opposite direction and presents long, banal, seemingly random and ambiguous actions which may or may not have any bearing on the central incident of the film. The Seventh Continent is perhaps is most successful at striking a balance in fitting its technique with an unsettling look at modern society and how it can lead to deeply disturbing and incomprehensible acts of violence.

DVD

The Haneke Trilogy is released in the UK by Artificial Eye as a three disc set. Each of the films is also released individually. The films are presented on dual-layer discs in PAL format and encoded for Region 2.

Video
All three films are newly transferred from almost flawless prints that show only a few infrequent and very minor white dustspots. Each of the films is presented anamorphically at a 1.78:1 ratio which, depending on the original ratio of the films – probably 1.66:1 – may not involve much cropping of the image. This doesn’t seem to cause many complications with the framing of the films, but it is almost certainly not how they were originally envisioned. Each of the films intentionally has a very dull, cool colour scheme, which is generally well represented on each DVD. On dual-layer discs, all of the films show fine stability in the transfers with no signs of any kind of artefacts. See individual reviews (linked above) for more detail.

Audio
The original German mono audio track on each film is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and is strong and clear with only some minor background noise being audible on Benny’s Video.

Subtitles
Optional English subtitles are included on each of the films in a clear white font.

Extras
Each DVD contains an interview with Michael Haneke conducted by Serge Toubiana, where the director gives his thoughts on each of the film, what instigated them, what he was trying to achieve and the techniques he employs. The interview on 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance is slightly extended to take in the trilogy as a whole and Haneke’s general thoughts on his filmmaking processes.

Overall
Michael Haneke’s films present a deeply disquieting view of society and the actions of individuals struggling to comprehend the contradictions of modern living, unable to communicate their sense of isolation other than through expressions of extreme violence. But there is more than just misery depicted in the seemingly bleak situations of this trilogy of films. Just as much of the violence takes on greater force by being shown indirectly and often off-screen, so too beauty is alluded to but not directly shown since, according to Haneke, any attempt to show it will render it false. The truth and meaning of these films therefore lies in the reaction that they provoke in the viewer. This may not make the films any easier to view or objectively evaluate, but it means that they remain endlessly and grimly fascinating. Artificial Eye's presentation of the films is effectively a repackaging of the out-of-print Tartan editions of the films, which means that they are largely fine, with appropriately toned transfers and good commentary on each of the films through director interviews.

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