The Masterful Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke, Emmanuel Riva & Jean-Louis Trintignant

When the lights came on at the end of the film Amour, a good half of the audience remained seated; some in silence, others quietly talking or drying up their tears. It’s true that this was an art film house audience and many were silver-haired couples, getting closer in age to the one whose drama had unfolded on the screen; none the less (or all the more) few movies elicit the gasps, sobs and ultimate stunned stillness that does this new piece of art from the masterful Michael Haneke.  

In Amour we are spectators to what awaits us all, if we live long enough: the natural and inevitable, yet somehow still unjust betrayal of our bodies as they succumb to old age and disease. At the same time we witness one of the most beautiful love stories a screen has held, in all its humanity and realism. Haneke does so in his style of brutal naturalism. No music score necessary to add emotion to each scene.  We are not told how to feel, we are just shown life in all its difficult and many times disturbing facets.

This director can bring out the amazing in the actors he works with.  The diabolically chilling acting by Arno Frisch as the psychopath Paul in Funny Games alongside the equally remarkable Susanne Lothar in the same movie, both so very hard to watch because  we know how true they are, and the truth can be so shocking. In some films his cast consists of a few in closed in situations and places, as is the case in Amour or Funny Games; in others, where the cast is extensive, like in The White Ribbon or Code Inconnu, each of the supporting actors, even in the most minor of roles, is captivating to watch. When working with actors that already have a career in the fabulous, Haneke allows them to take us into realms of awe. Such is certainly the case with the remarkable Emmanuel Riva in Amour, and the no less so Jean-Louis Trintignant as her love painfully dealing with her suffering. Every actor in Haneke’s films has to transform themselves into ordinary people in extraordinary situations. They don’t act, they are.  Juliette Binoche  and Daniel Auteuil in Cache, or even Annie Girardot as Auteuil’s mother in that movie; Isabell Hupert in The Piano Teacher… the list is as long as this auteur’s movies.

 Amour has already won the Palme D’Or at Cannes. It most probably will only take home one of the five Academy Awards for which it has been nominated (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Foreign Film and Best Actress for Emmanuelle Riva), although it should win all five of them, in this cinephile’s humble opinion.  Not that Haneke makes films to win awards, but a great movie should be given awards so that many more people will see it. It is not unusual that the Academy will give a film like Amour only the Best Foreign Language film (which Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon should have won back in 2009) instead of the Best Picture award that it deserves. The Academy shies away from great films that depict life at is it. Last year the French film The Artist won precisely because it is a film that distracts from life, not one that embraces its realism.  Films like The Artist or The King’s Speech leave us the moment the lights turn on. Amour and Michael Haneke’s many other marvelous films not only keep us in our seats at the theatre past the final credits, they haunt us as we go on with our lives as we know we’ve just seen them on the screen.