XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Bereamic Awesome Movie

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

OJT One of Mikael Haneke's first feature films makes a great impact on the viewer. I'm writing this after seeing this film for thew second time, 21 years after watching it in a cinema, in a film club setting. Back then we didn't know how many extraordinary films Haneke would be making later on. In that setting, I must say this showed promise of a controversial director with an important message in his films. Haneke wants to make discussions, and don't really care if he is controversial or even disgust people watching his films.Benny is a loner of a 14 year old boy, using so much time in his own room watching violent videos as well as making his own videos with his Video8 camera. His parents are rich, but largely absent from his upbringing, but are more hands on than normal, when they are at home. During a trip to the video store Benny meets a girl of his own age, and invites her home, to show her a video h has made about a pig being shot with a slaughter gun. He shows her the gun he has stolen, and from there the story turns severe.It's not really possible to give a review of this film without telling too much. Still there's no point in spilling the beans. The film has more than one surprise up in the sleeve, and is well suited for discussions in a group or a media class. I can assure you that the viewers will have different views on what they make of this movie. Why is Benny doing this? Is this likely or even at all realistic? Why do they do the things they do? Whta would you have done in the same situation? Who's to blame? Does it provoke you? Are we watching a sociopath in the making? Why did Haneke make this film?As always in Haneke's films, the actors are brilliant in their play, though it's easy to criticize the ideas if you don't like them. Arno Frisch is brilliantly portraying young Benny, as a boy who has lost his way due to some reason or another.After viewing this film the first time, back in 1993, we had one of the greatest discussions I ever experienced after a film. We always went to a café side-by-side to the cinema after the film club showings, and this film made us having a major discussion. So I never forgot this film, and Haneke, or Austrian films for that matter. I must say this film made an immensely impact on me due to this. Watching it again so many years later, reminds me of what I really remember of the film, which is almost half. When you remember so much of it, it's no doubt a great film. Not flawless, but important as well as remarkable.This can't be recommended to the faint hearted, nor due to the content, the violence or the moral. You'll better stay away if you are easily disgusted or offended.

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx Benny, an Austrian teenager likes to sit in his darkened room and watch videos. Not only that but he prefers total saturation, when he's not watching TV, it's always on in the background, along with heavy metal. Benny has two expressions, absorption, and the nonchalant mask he puts on to manipulate people. It appears his favourite video is one he took himself of a pig being slaughtered during a family holiday. When the pig gets it with the airgun po-faced Benny rewinds.It was an unnerving film for me to watch simply because there was I in a darkened room watching a TV screen surrounded by bookshelf after bookshelf of videos, watching Benny in exactly the same surroundings. Furthermore Benny was pretty much the same age as I was back in 1992. I even had nostalgia for the packaging at the local MacDonalds, nine chicken McNuggets in a box with woven print! Haneke takes forensic shots of these fast food items, just like his static shots of the father taking apart the telephone in The Seventh Continent.Benny it seems is often left alone on the weekends, lord knows what I would have got up to if I'd been left at home with a few bills from mum and dad's wallet! (I knew a boy at school who was in that situation and ended up becoming the school drug dealer). Benny likes getting videos from the local video store a lot, this also was my teenage preoccupation. The more violent and crazy the better! We're left in no doubt as to his character, at choir practice all the angelic boys sing full-throated and yet are passing notes and pills behind their backs in a relay. Superbly subversive shooting!Benny has got bored with anything other than video and even has a very creepy setup where he draws blackout blinds on all the living room windows, the image from outside is then relayed through a video camera peeping out, to a television set just in front of the window! Here we have the heart of voyeurism, one-way engagement.It's clear things are not going to go well, as we are in the world of Michael Haneke, and in a humour-free universe. Benny lures a young girl home from the video store where he proceeds to video her death at his hands. He uses the airgun from his favourite porcine video. He seems initially perturbed after the murder, but we also see him stop to have a glass of milk, and also in the evening he arranges to go out partying and to copy his friend's homework.World cinema lovers will be pleased to see Ulrich Muhe (recently from The Lives of Others) as the father. At length, Benny has to tell his parents what he has done as the girl's corpse has been in a cupboard in their flat for two days. It's at this point where we see how purblind the parents are. The living room is decorated in yet more image saturation, Magritte, Warhol, Liechtenstein, Botticelli, all collaged into a morass of vacant imagery and valuelessness. The father's initial thoughts include the impact of the murder on Benny's CV. Truly this piece of paper represents the sum of one's existence in this warped universe! The parent's decide to cover the murder up, and Benny and his mother go for a holiday in the middle east.The part in the middle east is very pretty, we see all sorts of shots of marketplaces, ancient mud-built houses, hieroglyphics, monuments. It's clear though that this is again yet more vacant image saturation, however beautiful, the hieroglyphics meaningless to Benny and his mother who look on in their culturally imperialistic parade around Egpyt, Tunisia and beyond. Another reviewer has pointed to the remorseless contemptibility of this exercise, however I think that both Benny and his mother were experiencing remorse (ie. Benny has his head shaved, the mother cries on her hotel bed), in however constipated a manner.Benny almost inexplicably decides on his return home to Austria to shop his parents to the police, having recorded their post-discovery conversation. Is this Haneke signalling just desserts, indicating that if you breed vipers they will eat you? Is Benny manipulatively shopping his parents in the hope of clemency, or has he genuinely had a pang of conscience and proffered his parents to justice? At the end we are left with some ambivalences but also a clear indication of the importance of parenting, and the toxicity of image: 24/7 news flow of Balkan conflict, RoboCop, advertising and modern art serves to gloopify the brain! A slight pity that Haneke went down the Funny Games dead ends after this, with only Cache as a return to form. This film urges one to self-examine, and is therefore, priceless.10/10

The_Void Michael Haneke is a filmmaker that isn't afraid to go all out to shock his viewer. My only previous experience with the director was his later film 'Funny Games', which I enjoyed immensely for its pitch black humour and willingness to go that extra mile to ensure that the film shocks as it should. While I didn't enjoy Benny's Video as much as Funny Games on the whole, it is an overall more shocking film due to the youth of its main character and the matter-of-fact way that the story is presented. Michael Haneke affords his film a gritty atmosphere through cheap-looking film stock and constant cuts with material shot on a video camera. The film focuses on a young man named Benny. Benny has an obsession with violent horror, and his favourite tape appears to be footage of a pig being slaughtered. He takes it upon himself to steal the slaughter gun, and when his parents leave him at home unsupervised; he invites a young girl into his house. It's not long before the slaughter gun is being put to use again, and the murder of the girl is caught on Benny's video camera.On the one hand, this is a dark and gritty portrayal of a situation that no one would want to be in, and at its strong points; Benny's Video is an emotionally involving and even tormenting film. However, it would seem that the director wasn't really sure about where exactly to take it, and has unfortunately seen fit to pad the film out with drawn out and not entirely relevant sequences, which ultimately brings it down. All the main characters are well presented and believable, and the film benefits from a strong cast of actors that manage to get into their characters well. The best scene in the movie sees Benny's parents discussing what they do, and if the entire movie was as good as that scene; Haneke would have had a masterpiece on his hands. Michael Haneke's direction is very 'no frills', as while he uses tricks such as cutting the film with video camera footage, it's all done very calmly...which ultimately benefits the film, as the sober atmosphere really allows the audience to be dragged in. Overall, as mentioned; the film isn't as easy to get on with as the later 'Funny Games', but Benny's Video will no doubt appeal to those who enjoy dark and challenging films.

vvvallaton Michael Haneke is dealing a important issue here as a teenager boy Benny watches violent films and murders a girl at the same age as a result. The rest of the film tries to show how Benny and his parents are dealing with this situation but it fails to make an impact of any kind.The first part of the film works pretty OK. Haneke's very realistic directing works well and the scene where Benny kills the girl is shown through a video screen is very effective. But after that the film does not really go anywhere. Haneke tries to show here how Benny's parents tries to handle the situation after Benny has shown them the video where the killing happens. I can see what Haneke tries to say here but he gives a pretty black and white point of view about the issue. Characters don't show any motions here (except in one scene on the end where Benny's mother breaks) and while it is parentally meant to be that way it's also a problem of the film. Benny's cold and insensible presence is getting more and more irritating as he stays the same through the whole film and you don't really care what's happening to him. You don't really get into his parents either as their are not allowed to show their feelings either.While Benny's parents are clearly one of the main reasons for his behavior, the message is here a little too underlining. And the long period of Benny's and his mothers vacation in Egypt does not really do anything for the movie. It feels like Haneke tries to get something out from the characters and their relationships but he ends up nothing. Many scenes are shot through Benny's video camera and i think Haneke is trying to take the viewer into Benny's mind but he does not succeed there either. Benny's actions are quite mild and non-interesting.There is no reason either why Benny shows the video for police and gives his parents in. He says to police that "no reason". The same problem is in "Funny Games" also as Haneke does not really seem to know what he wants to say after all.I give a credit to Haneke for making a movie like this and i really like his realistic style and slow pace. But it's a shame that his skills for character study and storytelling lacks too much. It's all very shocking and everything but that's not enough to make a good movie.