The order in which I watch the trilogy is exactly the opposite of the time he was filmed. I watched Seventy Fragments of the Chronicle of Opportunity first, then Benny's Video, and finally The Seventh Continent. These three films should all come from real events. They have a strong sense of documentary, and at the same time they are very cold, with a sense of metal, just like the faint cold light emitted by the steel material in the shadows. People become irritable in peace, and from irritability comes uneasiness, from uneasiness they feel terrified, and finally they can't help but feel sad.
The icy, metallic world of
Haneke's glacier trilogy has always been about the middle class, the invariable, emotionless middle class that he hates. His world is always an indifferent world, the relationship between people seems to be very alienated, and even the communication between relatives tends to be programmed.
The world in "Glacier" is like a mechanical world. Everything is so accurate, everything is so well-behaved, everything is so rigid, all the emotions are buried under the glacier, and there is very little emotional flow between them. Nowhere is this more evident than in The Seventh Continent, the first of the trilogy. In the three years before the reversal of things, the family in the film looked peaceful and peaceful on the surface, but in fact, life had been like a pre-designed program, year after year, without any change. At the same time every day, the alarm clock rings, reluctantly gets up, washes up, wakes up the children, and then the family sits at the dining table for breakfast, even the meals they eat every day, and the greetings to each other are exactly the same. Then drive to work and come home at night, the same routine every day. In this kind of life, when learning German, you can often see similar situations in videos. This is a standard family model in Germany or Austria.
The same goes for the family in "Benny's Video." The parents are busy with their work all day long. The two have decent occupations and high incomes, but they have no time to take care of their children. The children stay at home by themselves every day and do what they like. Parents may be trying to make up for their regrets, and they can be said to be obedient to their children's requirements. The child can get everything he gets, but the most needed emotion cannot be obtained. Every day after school, he spends his time playing with the camera. Watch the bloody pig slaughter video over and over again, record every moment of the street outside your home, and rent violent tapes from the rental shop. It can be seen from the movie that his life is extremely empty and extremely boring. Even if his parents come home at night, they rarely communicate with him. Moreover, his parents often leave home on weekends, leaving him at home alone. In such a family, one can imagine how the children grow up.
Seventy-One Fragments of the Chronicle of Opportunity is more documentary, not a family, but an event. However, the characters involved in the film all face difficulties in communication, especially between relatives. In Haneke's words, "the closer we are, the less we talk." The character is either an orphan or an adopted child. Either there is a lack of communication with the old wife, and there is love in the heart but it is difficult to express; or there is a gap between the elderly living alone and their children...
Everyone is speechless, like a cold mechanical world. People living in such a world can no longer live in harmony with others. It is best to have a little twist and turn, and it will lead to a huge disaster.
If the world of Haneke
just glows with metal, then such a world lacks emotion, but it is not cruel and terrible. But Haneke will never be such a person, he is not a person who seeks peace, although most of his films spend most of their time in peace, all stereotyped and boring lives. He has a sharp scalpel, a calmness and determination that is different from ordinary people, and a preference for blood and violence. The calm in the front is only to pave the way for the sudden changes in the back; the audience is in a drowsy state, waiting for a head-on knife, and the sudden burst of blood will make you lose your soul. He was like a legendary Jianghu master who suddenly delivered an unexpected fatal blow.
In "Opportunity", the fragments that seem to be one place are unrelated to each other, and everything develops illogically. Different characters, different families, everyone has their own stories, and there is no intersection between the stories, each developing on its own track, just like countless threads scattered in the air, with many clues, but no intersection. It is also like a fragment scattered on the ground, only reflecting the story in that fragment. However, these threads, these fragments, eventually all converged with the male protagonist. With the eruption of his calm, with the sound of the gunshots, with the blood splattered, it all gathered in him. And what led to all this, just like the name of the film, was opportunity. Horrible and cold-blooded opportunities, accidental events and characters, and so on to destruction.
Seeing Benny constantly playing with his VCR, repeating his daily routine from home to school, the audience felt nothing but boredom. This is a normal and poor child whose daily life is the same. No one communicated with him except for one of his classmates. It's just that the home video of killing pigs he played over and over again made the audience feel the chills. We can tell from the movie that he has a great interest in this video, and the video of his father's gun aimed at the pig's forehead also excited him. He hid in his room, peeping at everything outside, and at the same time looking for his prey, intending to try his hand on the prey. He waited for that opportunity, and he also enjoyed the thrill of killing. It's just that the audience can only wait, waiting for something to happen, waiting for how the disaster will end peacefully.
If you say waiting, the longest waiting time is undoubtedly the first "Seventh Continent" in "Glacier". Haneke presents everything about this family in great detail with relish, their daily life, their connection with the outside world, we can all know in detail, the only thing we lack is their emotions, including their relationship with each other. emotional exchange between. Such a life is a torment for the audience, and even more so for the people in the play. They endured this kind of life for several years, and in the end they couldn't bear it, so they naturally went to find their ideal home "Seventh Continent". The people in the play are waiting, and the audience is also waiting, but the wait is so long, and the one who waits is not like the first two films with a knife and a sharp cut. It's a dull knife, and it's slowly cutting through your nerves.
The more you watch Haneke's movies, the more you will get used to his calmness and sternness, waiting for a sudden change in the situation. The calmer the front is, the more thrilling the back is.
Ordinary People in Violent News The characters in the
"Glacier Trilogy" are all unremarkable people, just like you and me. The family in "The Seventh Continent" looks very happy on the surface. The husband is a manager of a company, waiting to be the boss; the wife is an optometrist, and the daughter is very well-behaved, only occasionally naughty and falsely claiming that her eyes are invisible. The family in "Benny's Video" seems to be rich, with the father running an IT company and the mother running a fashion store. Compared with the former family, the parents are busy with their own affairs, ignoring the existence of their sons. Seventy-One Fragments of the Chronicle of Opportunity has a much wider setting and more social characters, but the characters in it are just as ordinary as we are, with their own troubles and ordinary lives. It stands to reason that they should not appear in the news, especially this kind of bloody social news, but in fact they are the protagonists of the news. This is the amazing place.
In fact, it is not surprising that not all people who appear in news events are marginalized people in society, but more of them are ordinary people like us. They live happily, they live tenaciously, they bear the burden of life, they endure the boredom of life... Usually we see people in life who are always busy running for life, or are bored I swayed around, but who knows what kind of emotions and helplessness there will be under the calm faces? One day, we will see some of us in the news, they have become criminals, they have killed themselves, and we will be shocked that there is such a cruel thing behind the original calm face.
The families in "The Seventh Continent" feel that they can't see the end of their monotonous life. Everything is so step-by-step, and there is no surprise or warmth in life. The seventh continent is just a dream in their minds, will it be on the warm Australian coast? Even if they move there, it's just a change of life and the environment is exactly the same as in Austria. They don't have any external persecution, they just can't stand it in the rigidity. They calmly made their choice to pursue their dream land. It's just that this choice is so violent, so unusual, so surprising. Instead of killing people, they killed themselves.
"Benny's Video" focuses more on the family's reaction after the incident.
Benny's family is not as desperate as the previous one, and seems to be full of hope. In fact, if you think about it carefully, such a family is even more terrifying. They do not have the same family value as the former, and their relationship with each other is more ruthless. The neglect of parents for their children is the cause of tragedy. Their desperate efforts to cover up afterward made the callousness of the middle-class couple even more apparent. They can handle everything rationally and calmly, including bloody violence and cold corpses. Benny is even better than the blue. He inherits the calm and rationality of his parents, and at the same time, he is more violent and cruel. In the end, Benny sent his parents to prison. Is this the awakening of Benny's conscience, or is it Benny's strategy to protect himself? Thinking about it makes me shudder.
For Marco, a nineteen-year-old college student, he would never end his life without warning. He also has his own pursuits and his own dreams. Life has not yet fully unfolded for him, and there are more things ahead for him to experience. Unfortunately, due to a series of accidental events, the trajectory of his life has changed and he has gone to a point of no return. The failures again and again made the anger in his heart accumulate. Everyone has their unhappy times, and everyone has their own time to vent their anger, but what is surprising is the way he vented his anger, which was cold and cruel. In the end, he swallowed the gun himself.
In the Glacier trilogy, although Haneke did not dig more into human nature, he also showed the darkness in human nature vividly. This is a group of desperate people, or the whole life, or the current stage of life, or even just an occasional despair at a certain point in time, but fundamentally, it is a group of indifferent people who lack communication , they amplify this desperation with catastrophic consequences.
Haneke's "Glacier Trilogy" focuses on the violence in the news, which is originally the most interesting and interesting movie subject. In Haneke's hands, however, he cleanly strips out the most fascinating, keeping only the most violent moments, leaving plenty of room for the less exciting life. This is a rather bold and powerful approach. He made the audience have expectations in the waiting, and let the audience reflect in the deadly indifference. In this way, the shock of the movie will become more intense, and his calm dissection of society will appear sharper.
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