Michael Haneke - A biography part 2: 1999 to date. (part 1)

Despite the success of Funny Games, all of Haneke's efforts to get a further film off the ground were frustrated until a call from French actress Juliette Binoche (asking Haneke to make a film with her in France) led to making Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (aka Code Inconnu: Récit Incomplet de Divers Voyages) in 2000. Code Unknown (starring Binoche) took a scene of a confrontation amongst a group of people and follows their diverging (and ultimately converging) paths after the confrontation. The film marked Haneke's leap from Austrian director to European director with its French and European outlook on matters such as migration and integration. Despite its fragmented approach (reminiscent of his approach with 71 Fragments) the film was yet another critical success winning both a jury prize and a Golden Palm nomination at Cannes.

2001 saw the breakthrough into the big league of world cinema with his adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek's novel The Piano Teacher (aka La Pianiste). This film centres around Erika a virtuoso pianist and and piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory who, approaching her 40's, lives at home with her strict and repressive mother, and is seemingly scared of physical intimacy. One of her pupils Walter, a vain young man, make his interest in her clear, and Erica's hither to hidden sexual peculiarities and sadomasochistic tendencies now become focused on Walter's advances. Trusting she has found a partner to fulfil her desires, her stone clad exterior is maintained as she advises him of his duties to her (to indulge her masochistic tendencies). Disgusted by her suggestions Walter immediately rejects and abandons her. Erika exposed and lost begins to fall apart, and with the balance of power now with Walter,she pleads with him to allow her to make him happy. The Piano Teacher, despite its extreme and relatively explicit nature,was a significant commercial and critical success winning Best Actress, Best Actor and the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and with Isabelle Huppert (Best Actress) and Michael Haneke winning many awards around Europe.

Buoyed by the stunning success of The Piano Teacher, 2003 finally saw the Time of The Wolf (aka Le Temps du Loup) a project that he had unsuccessfully tried to get commissioned over many years, released. Again starring Isabelle Huppert, Time of the Wolf is set in the post-apocalyptic France of the near future. Society has crumbled, the nation's infrastructure is also in shatters, and there is no running water, electricity or apparent transport. Anne (who else), her husband George (who else, again) and young son and daughter escape from the town and arrive at the refuge of their summer home. Upon arriving there they find it is already occupied by squatters who proceed to shoot and kill George before stealing all the family's supplies and force them to leave move on. Eventually they come to a railway station where a small struggling group of individuals are holed up in the hope that a train will come past, which they can then make stop, and that it will take them somewhere safe. With food and water running low and leaders taking control of the demand for supplies, things begin to look even more bleak. But then a large group of travelers join the community and among them is the man who shot Anne's husband. How will Anne and the fledgling community deal with this new situation? Time of the Wolf did not really maintain the momentum of The Piano Teacher, despite a fantastic and tremendously thought provoking (if stark) story, excellent performances from Isabelle Huppert and Beatrice Dalle and some excellent cinematography, the starkness of the film may have alienated it's potential somewhat.

A return to form came in 2006 with the critically acclaimed Hidden (aka Cache). Hidden tells the story of Georges (!) the famous host of an arts discussion show on TV, who lives in Paris in a comfortable house with his wife Anne (!!) and son Pierrot. Georges begins to receive surveillance videotapes of their house and their comings and goings. George and Anne are spooked but they are at a loss as to who may be doing this. When strange childlike drawings are sent through the door with a videotape, it stirs in Georges a childhood memory of Majid, an Algerian boy who his parents were going to adopt, and that George tried to stop becoming part of the family. When they take the evidence and his suspicions to the police they are told there is nothing the police can do until an offence has been committed. So Georges takes the law into his own hands to make the suspected perpetrator desist from victimising his family. Hidden feels like a culmination (or concentration) of the common themes that prevail through Haneke's body of work. We are invited, as the audience, to join George in becoming voyeur in watching the surveillance, and also to become complicit in Georges pursuit of Majid who he believes is responsible for the surveillance but the perpetrator of the victimisation becomes blurred, as does the (hidden) guilt of Georges previous (and) treatment of Majid, and by extension his nation's treatment of immigrants to France starts to become apparent. Hidden is such a clever and skillful piece of writing by Haneke, and its realisation onto film is a masterpiece, and its critical reception even eclipsed that of The Piano Teacher.

2008 saw the release of Haneke's remake of his 1997 feature Funny Games. Set in the USA and this time starring Tim Roth and Naomi Watts as the ubiquitous George and Anna. The remake is pretty much shot-for-shot as per the original but has brought Haneke's work to a slightly wider audience. Given Haneke's previous films comments on violence, perhaps the needless remake of a needlessly violent film about needless violence, is as 'funny' a comment on society's viewing pleasures are you are likely to see anywhere. The official Funny Games (US) site contains some clips, trailers, downloads and a unique interactive video game.

His next project slated for release in 2009 is Das Weiße Band (The White Tape). It is set in a German school in 1913 and looks at how individual acts of violence inflict on society. I wonder if it will include any characters named George or Anna?