![]() The camera almost always remains detached and objective, keeping the viewer at a figurative distance from the diegesis and inviting us not to identify with the protagonists (in the Hitchcock sense), but, rather, to analyse and reflect upon them and their actions. The short vignettes of their lives are also all observed with a dispassionate, often static camera that reflects the static, stationary lives of the characters. It depicts snapshots in the drab, anaesthetised lives of a myriad of all too real and recognisable characters, to whom one is not introduced in any conventional sense: there is no exposition, one doesn’t even learn the names of many of the characters, and this underlines the fact that they are representative beings they are or can be anyone or everyone in contemporary society. Formally and conceptually, the film is one of the most challenging narrative works of the 1990s. No other film in the Haneke canon deserves (re)discovery and analysis as much as 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (it is, outside of his adaptation of Kafka’s The Castle, the director’s most obscure title, being unavailable for home viewing on video or DVD and rarely screened theatrically it was also virtually ignored on its initial release). But his oeuvre before Funny Games‘ diatribe against violence as entertainment has so far gone largely un-examined, receiving little (if any) serious critical attention, even though the seeds of his most famous and acclaimed films are clearly present in Haneke’s work from his feature debut The Seventh Continent (1989). Mark Cousins has talked of Haneke’s style and thematic as representative of “mbitious 1990s cinema” (1). Whether his work is seen as nihilistic and misanthropic or as a profound, existential analysis of the malaise of modern capitalist society and culture, there can be little argument that Haneke’s films are powerful, disturbing and, right now with the world as it is, vital. Since he first came to widespread critical prominence and notoriety with Funny Games (1997), he has been both lauded and reviled as a sensational, pessimistic purveyor of contemporary alienation in the industrialised, media-driven First World someone in many ways akin to a Michelangelo Antonioni (a director Haneke greatly admires) for the 21st century. Michael Haneke is one of the most important and vital filmmakers in world cinema today. Source: Bavaria Films Prod Co: Wega Film Prod: Vit Heiduschka Dir, Scr: Michael Haneke Phot: Jürgen Jürges Ed: Marie Homolkova Prod Des: Christoph KanterĬast: Gabriel Cosmin Urdes, Lukas Miko, Otto Grünmandl, Anne Bennent, Udo Samel, Branko Samarovski 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994 Austria 96 mins)
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