The Cinema of Michael Haneke Blu-ray
HomeThe Cinema of Michael Haneke Blu-ray
Posted October 4, 2013 07:06 PM by Webmaster
French label TF1 Video will release a Blu-ray box set with twelve films directed by acclaimed Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke. Amongst the films included in the box set the Oscar winning Amour (2012), Time of the Wolf (2003), The Piano Teacher (2001), and Code Unknown (2001). The box set will be available for purchase in France on December 4th.
Box set content:
The Seventh Continent a.k.a Der siebente Kontinent
The acclaimed Austrian director Michael Haneke's directorial debut is a disturbing study of a family in crisis. The storyline follows three years in the life of Georg (Dieter Berner), his wife Anna (Birgit Doll) and their daughter Eva (Leni Tanzer), during which time a psychological blindness leads to the family's self-destruction. The film explores familiar Haneke themes: the bourgeouis family unit, professional success and the price of conformism.
Benny's Video
A graphically disturbing drama about a socially alienated teenager whose world-view is gauged through video cameras. The film questions the desensitising aspects of images of violence on television and the media in general, and the effect this has on the moral reasoning of the young. Benny (Arno Frisch) is an only child, intelligent, but a bit of a loner. He sits in his room most nights, with his video cameras and TV, watching horror films and listening to heavy rock music. Inviting a young girl his own age back to his room one day, he shows her a video, that he has filmed, of a pig being slaughtered. Producing the bolt-gun used in the killing, the pair then play a game of 'dare', which results in the girl being shot dead by Benny. When his parents eventually find out, he's taken off to Egypt while his father attempts to hide the evidence.
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance a.k.a 71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls
Thought-provoking film by acclaimed Austrian director Michael Haneke. The film begins with a horrific mass killing on Christmas Eve 1993 by a boy who callously kills several people then kills himself. The film then flashes back as the fragmented story follows the lives of strangers, all with different lives but all having the same sense of hopelessness, culminating into one fateful night.
The Castle a.k.a Das Schloß
Existential drama directed by Michael Haneke and adapted from the novel by Franz Kafka. Land surveyor, K. (Ulrich Mühe), arrives at a small village that houses a castle. Though he was invited to the castle by officials, authorities refuse to allow him to enter and befuddle him with increasingly bizarre bureaucratic obstacles. K. grows perplexed by this and ultimately feels alienated from the society he has entered into.
Funny Games (Original)
Anna (Susan Lothar) and Georg Schober (Ulrich Mühe) arrive with their son, Georgie, at their lakeside holiday home. Through their neighbour, Fred, they meet Paul (Arno Frisch) and his friend Peter (Frank Giering). However, once inside Anna and Georg's house, Peter and Paul begin to torture them, betting that in twenty-four hours they and Georgie will be dead. When Georgie manages to escape to Fred's house, he discovers that the neighbour and his wife have already been murdered: it seems that Paul and Peter are serious about continuing their 'game' to the finish.
Code Unknown a.k.a Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages
Walking along a Paris street, following a meeting with his brother's girlfriend Anne (Juliette Binoche), Jean (Alexandre Hamidi) contemptuously throws an empty paper bag into the open hands of Romanian beggar Maria (Luminita Gheorghiu). Music teacher Amadou (Ona Lu Yenke) witnesses this, and when he demands that Jean apologise to Maria, the two get caught in a scuffle which results in both Amadou's arrest and Maria's deportation. Michael Haneke's film takes this brief moment and follows the paths of all its main characters over the subsequent weeks, tracing the subtle ways in which different lives intertwine in modern-day Europe.
The Piano Teacher a.k.a La Pianiste
Isabelle Huppert gives an award-winning performance as a repressed, masochistic music teacher in this acclaimed film from director Michael Haneke. Erika Kohut (Huppert) teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory, lives with her domineering mother (Annie Girardot), and privately engages in a series of degrading, masochistic acts. When one of her new students, the handsome Walter Klemmer (Benoît Magimel), tries to seduce her, Erika is first startled, but then agrees to the affair if it can be conducted on her own terms. What happens next threatens to make her self-destructive impulse even stronger.
Time of the Wolf a.k.a Le Temps du Loup
Isabelle Huppert stars in this tense post-apocalyptic drama, set in a world in which society has completely broken down. Anne (Huppert) flees the city with her husband and two children, hoping to find refuge at the family's country home. But when they arrive they realise they have made a terrible mistake, and must embark on a harrowing journey across a land devasted by disaster.
Hidden a.k.a Cache
Acclaimed French thriller from writer-director Michael Haneke. Georges (Daniel Auteuil) is a successful TV presenter, happily married to Anne (Juliette Binoche). Their idyllic, middle-class life is suddenly derailed when Georges starts receiving tapes through the post, from someone who has been secretly filming him and his family as they go about their daily business. Gradually the tapes become more intimate and personal, suggesting that the perpetrator is someone who knows Georges well. With the police unable to help, Georges and Anne find their comfortable existence gradually unravelling into paranoia and mistrust. Be sure to keep watching as the credits roll...
Funny Games (U.S. Remake)
In this US remake of his 1997 film 'Funny Games', director Michael Haneke delivers a savage critique on the way violence is portrayed in the media. Arriving at their remote holiday cabin in the Hamptons for a quiet vacation, George (Tim Roth), his wife Ann (Naomi Watts), and their young son Georgie (Devon Gearheart), find themselves subjected to a harrowing ordeal involving mental and physical torture, when two young, psychotic killers come calling.
The White Ribbon a.k.a Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte
Michael Haneke won the 2009 Cannes Palme d'Or for this two-and-a-half hour black and white study of German rural village life in 1913. Focusing in particular on the austere and often brutal environment of the village school, the film not only exposes the cruelty and hypocrisy of adults towards children but offers an insight into the undercurrents of patriarchy and repression that went on to shape 20th-century Germany. As the outbreak of war draws near, a series of violent and unexplained events shake the small community to its core. In true Haneke style, the film is less concerned with providing a definitive answer to 'whodunnit' than with examining the unhealthy processes that contribute to a sick, disenfranchised society.
Amour
Michael Haneke directs this Academy Award-winning drama exploring death, ageing and the fear of loss. Anne and George (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) are a couple in their 80s who are enjoying their retirement, but that changes when, after an operation following a stroke, Anne is left wheelchair-bound and paralysed. Although she expresses her wish to die, even going so far as to make an attempt at taking her own life, George tries to remind her of the beauty and worth of life itself and the love that they share for each other. The feature won the Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film, and received a BAFTA for Best Leading Actress (Riva).
Box set content:
The Seventh Continent a.k.a Der siebente Kontinent
The acclaimed Austrian director Michael Haneke's directorial debut is a disturbing study of a family in crisis. The storyline follows three years in the life of Georg (Dieter Berner), his wife Anna (Birgit Doll) and their daughter Eva (Leni Tanzer), during which time a psychological blindness leads to the family's self-destruction. The film explores familiar Haneke themes: the bourgeouis family unit, professional success and the price of conformism.
Benny's Video
A graphically disturbing drama about a socially alienated teenager whose world-view is gauged through video cameras. The film questions the desensitising aspects of images of violence on television and the media in general, and the effect this has on the moral reasoning of the young. Benny (Arno Frisch) is an only child, intelligent, but a bit of a loner. He sits in his room most nights, with his video cameras and TV, watching horror films and listening to heavy rock music. Inviting a young girl his own age back to his room one day, he shows her a video, that he has filmed, of a pig being slaughtered. Producing the bolt-gun used in the killing, the pair then play a game of 'dare', which results in the girl being shot dead by Benny. When his parents eventually find out, he's taken off to Egypt while his father attempts to hide the evidence.
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance a.k.a 71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls
Thought-provoking film by acclaimed Austrian director Michael Haneke. The film begins with a horrific mass killing on Christmas Eve 1993 by a boy who callously kills several people then kills himself. The film then flashes back as the fragmented story follows the lives of strangers, all with different lives but all having the same sense of hopelessness, culminating into one fateful night.
The Castle a.k.a Das Schloß
Existential drama directed by Michael Haneke and adapted from the novel by Franz Kafka. Land surveyor, K. (Ulrich Mühe), arrives at a small village that houses a castle. Though he was invited to the castle by officials, authorities refuse to allow him to enter and befuddle him with increasingly bizarre bureaucratic obstacles. K. grows perplexed by this and ultimately feels alienated from the society he has entered into.
Funny Games (Original)
Anna (Susan Lothar) and Georg Schober (Ulrich Mühe) arrive with their son, Georgie, at their lakeside holiday home. Through their neighbour, Fred, they meet Paul (Arno Frisch) and his friend Peter (Frank Giering). However, once inside Anna and Georg's house, Peter and Paul begin to torture them, betting that in twenty-four hours they and Georgie will be dead. When Georgie manages to escape to Fred's house, he discovers that the neighbour and his wife have already been murdered: it seems that Paul and Peter are serious about continuing their 'game' to the finish.
Code Unknown a.k.a Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages
Walking along a Paris street, following a meeting with his brother's girlfriend Anne (Juliette Binoche), Jean (Alexandre Hamidi) contemptuously throws an empty paper bag into the open hands of Romanian beggar Maria (Luminita Gheorghiu). Music teacher Amadou (Ona Lu Yenke) witnesses this, and when he demands that Jean apologise to Maria, the two get caught in a scuffle which results in both Amadou's arrest and Maria's deportation. Michael Haneke's film takes this brief moment and follows the paths of all its main characters over the subsequent weeks, tracing the subtle ways in which different lives intertwine in modern-day Europe.
The Piano Teacher a.k.a La Pianiste
Isabelle Huppert gives an award-winning performance as a repressed, masochistic music teacher in this acclaimed film from director Michael Haneke. Erika Kohut (Huppert) teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory, lives with her domineering mother (Annie Girardot), and privately engages in a series of degrading, masochistic acts. When one of her new students, the handsome Walter Klemmer (Benoît Magimel), tries to seduce her, Erika is first startled, but then agrees to the affair if it can be conducted on her own terms. What happens next threatens to make her self-destructive impulse even stronger.
Time of the Wolf a.k.a Le Temps du Loup
Isabelle Huppert stars in this tense post-apocalyptic drama, set in a world in which society has completely broken down. Anne (Huppert) flees the city with her husband and two children, hoping to find refuge at the family's country home. But when they arrive they realise they have made a terrible mistake, and must embark on a harrowing journey across a land devasted by disaster.
Hidden a.k.a Cache
Acclaimed French thriller from writer-director Michael Haneke. Georges (Daniel Auteuil) is a successful TV presenter, happily married to Anne (Juliette Binoche). Their idyllic, middle-class life is suddenly derailed when Georges starts receiving tapes through the post, from someone who has been secretly filming him and his family as they go about their daily business. Gradually the tapes become more intimate and personal, suggesting that the perpetrator is someone who knows Georges well. With the police unable to help, Georges and Anne find their comfortable existence gradually unravelling into paranoia and mistrust. Be sure to keep watching as the credits roll...
Funny Games (U.S. Remake)
In this US remake of his 1997 film 'Funny Games', director Michael Haneke delivers a savage critique on the way violence is portrayed in the media. Arriving at their remote holiday cabin in the Hamptons for a quiet vacation, George (Tim Roth), his wife Ann (Naomi Watts), and their young son Georgie (Devon Gearheart), find themselves subjected to a harrowing ordeal involving mental and physical torture, when two young, psychotic killers come calling.
The White Ribbon a.k.a Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte
Michael Haneke won the 2009 Cannes Palme d'Or for this two-and-a-half hour black and white study of German rural village life in 1913. Focusing in particular on the austere and often brutal environment of the village school, the film not only exposes the cruelty and hypocrisy of adults towards children but offers an insight into the undercurrents of patriarchy and repression that went on to shape 20th-century Germany. As the outbreak of war draws near, a series of violent and unexplained events shake the small community to its core. In true Haneke style, the film is less concerned with providing a definitive answer to 'whodunnit' than with examining the unhealthy processes that contribute to a sick, disenfranchised society.
Amour
Michael Haneke directs this Academy Award-winning drama exploring death, ageing and the fear of loss. Anne and George (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) are a couple in their 80s who are enjoying their retirement, but that changes when, after an operation following a stroke, Anne is left wheelchair-bound and paralysed. Although she expresses her wish to die, even going so far as to make an attempt at taking her own life, George tries to remind her of the beauty and worth of life itself and the love that they share for each other. The feature won the Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film, and received a BAFTA for Best Leading Actress (Riva).
