In this article I will continue to talk about boundaries, sadistic dominance and manipulation. Michael Haneke's Funny Games begins with a family idyll, supported by an operatic aria, which the characters listen to on their trip to a country house. It is worth saying here, that the first film was released in 1997, and 10 years later Haneke made a remake, in which he repeated every frame, dialogue and musical accompaniment with obsessive-compulsive pedantry. In my article I will refer to the remake with Tim Roth and Naomi Watts. The film opens with two frame from above. The second frame is shot larger, but also, as the cameramen say, from “God’s point of view.” If you pay attention, in deep films such shots are always about something and play into the scene and the story as a whole. "Funny Games" puts the viewer inside the story from the very beginning, as if to say: "We know that you are there, that you are looking at us." This line will develop and find its culmination. The viewer, on the one hand, is immersed in the story by a skillful atmosphere, verified camera work, on the other hand, they are clearly told: “Attention! You are watching a movie!” The way the director uncompromisingly interrupts a soothing operatic aria, how he explodes the viewer’s ears with screams and heavy chords, how he smears huge red letters in the eyes, as if saying: “This is a film!” - but the counterpoint is so strange and unusual that does not work as distancing for the viewer, but on the contrary - it draws him into the picture, making him worry about the characters. From the very beginning, Haneke makes it clear that this idyll, like the red letters that do not fit into the aesthetics of the frame, will be disrupted and destroyed by something. And very soon the viewer is shown two pleasant-looking young men. In white, with white gloves. One comes to Naomi Watts's character, Anne, and asks to borrow eggs from a neighbor with whom he is visiting. Ann goes to the refrigerator with a smile. This whole simple scene gradually becomes tense. Like Dogville, Funny Games very vaguely hints at the brewing conflict in the above scene. First, the above character Peter breaks eggs before leaving the house. Ann is still friendly and puts four more pieces in the box for him, but he simultaneously, in his awkwardness, drops his mobile phone into the sink and it turns off. The hostess turns to the young man: “Before you destroy my entire kitchen, take the eggs and leave.” This is what happens, and then a dog barks from the background. By the way, she barked a little earlier, when she first saw these guys. I don’t see the point in retelling this scene, since the tension is created not by the text, but by the game, the atmosphere, the rhythm of the picture. Both Ann and the viewer already understand that something is wrong, but they cannot indicate what exactly. And I suggest you watch at least the beginning of the film and listen to your feelings: how and where anxiety is born inside you when watching this scene, how it develops. Think about what causes it? I will be glad if you share your observations in the comments if this leads to a discussion. I suggest going on this experiment in order to learn to respond to your feelings. The next stage will be their analysis: are they adequate to the situation “here and now” or are they born of a projection from past experience, etc.? But in order to analyze, it is important to be able to hear and feel them. Peter and Anne are joined by a second young man named Paul. He looks extremely polite and neat and rushes towards the hostess's clubs, singing their praises. Paul asks Anne to let him run quickly and try out the putter: “one shot.” The heroine is uncomfortable, it’s obvious. However, for some reason she doesn’t refuse. Awkward? Or scary? Is it a reluctance to look rude or a fear of something hidden? The first brings us back to the conversation about “Dogville,” and the second poses the question: is it worth waiting when a ghostly threat looms? So, if we draw a parallel with animals, then a rabbit’s freezing in front of a boa constrictor for the eared one ends sadly =( Passive waiting works in nature when the victim is not visible. If a giraffe, zebra, gazelle - anyone was noticed by a bloodthirsty leopard, the victimtrying to make legs. Because if a hunting predator has already seen it, passive waiting makes no sense, depriving it of a chance of survival. Thomson’s cute gazelle, of course, can hope that it will pity the lion with its cuteness. But, I’m afraid, then she will still end her days in his stomach. I’m not a mathematician to give statistics on what her chances are of meeting a repentant meat-eater, I believe that there are exceptions. The Internet is full of stories about the friendship of a wolf and a man, a cheetah and a dog, a cat and a chicken, an elephant and a sheep, a tyrannosaurus and a baby mammoth. True, I believe that this happens, but it’s hardly worth taking as a rule. Therefore, Thomson’s cute and smart gazelle draws conclusions and either tries to make a colander out of the lion with its horns, or leaves. Like Grace in “Dogville” there were many opportunities listen to your feelings and leave the city, so in this film events develop more rapidly, leaving the heroes very little time for radical actions. And the characters, unfortunately, miss the opportunity. The director himself said about the film that he: “shows the viewer not violence, but his own position in relation to violence.” Michael Haneke mainly in his films explores violence in all its manifestations, be it "White Ribbon", dealing with fascism; “The Pianist,” which tells about sadomasochism in sex and life, or “Love,” which, in my personal conviction, is never about this feeling. Haneke himself said: “In my film I wanted to show what happens to a person who sees the suffering of a loved one... Violence is not what interests me most. A question about people and their feelings. Love as a feeling can be no less violent than anything else.” The director opposes Hollywood’s flirtation with violence, of which there was a lot before, and now most of the top-rated series are based on this, such as “Game of Thrones”, “Real blood”, “How to Get Away with Murder”, etc. The best film about violence, in his opinion, is Pasolini’s “120 Days of Sodom”, since it is completely intolerable. This is probably why Haneke, 10 years after the first “Funny Games,” went to Hollywood to partisan the remake, being his complete oppositionist: “You cannot make an anti-fascist movie in fascist aesthetics.” The heroes of “Funny Games” are in many ways the descendants of Alex from “A Clockwork Orange,” here there is flirtation in speech, and snow-white suits that rhyme with the robes of sadists from Kubrick’s film. And I remind you that - yes, the viewer loved these executioners and murderers in A Clockwork Orange, the reader loved them in Burgess’s original source. In Haneke’s work they are shown to be the greater fiend of evil, if only because the main characters are a family. The story begins with them, we get used to them initially. Despite this, I myself have personally seen groups on the Internet in which people discuss the attractiveness, sexuality and charm of young men in white. I very much doubt that Haneke, unlike Kubrick, was trying to create a similar effect. These characters don't ooze charm and charisma like so many compelling movie villains. I dare to hope that those groups on the Internet are a few exceptions. Returning to the substantive analysis of the film, I present to your attention the frame that follows after permission to make one blow with a club. In it you can see how Paul literally pushes the heroine away, seeming to apologize. And she is silent again. However, after a short period of time, Anne still declares that she does not want to participate in their games and asks to leave. However, Paul and Peter do not react. They also do not respond to the request of Ann’s newly arrived husband (Tim Roth). I do not presume to judge how the trap could have been avoided, at what point and what should have been done, but it seems to me a useful experiment to reflect on this while watching the film. I will warn you that the movie is really dark and leaves a burden on the soul, but I am firmly convinced that it is difficult and deep cinema is important to watch because it shows the diversity of this world, it opens the way to new thoughts, evokes resonance, poses questions and pushes us to search for answers..