Country: Austria
Director: Michael Haneke
Time: 2 hours and 11 minutes
Where Can I Get It: Criterion (free w/subscription) and Amazon ($3.99 to rent)
What It Evokes: Marquis de Sade musings, brutality, sexual transgression
Masochism, desire, control, brutality, and the many other components comprising the unarticulated spaces of darkness within our lives have long been the primary interest of Michael Haneke, perhaps the living director most intent upon challenging (and disconcerting) his audiences. I admire his films—their structure, the pristine coldness with which a certain form of “bourgeois” life gets scrutinized, their reliance on non-gimmicky sequence shots (of which his 2000 film Code Unknown is a particularly rich example), their conscious manipulation, something naturally inherent in all filmmaking but in his work always underscored by a plethora of shot types, camera ranges, and multiple media formats which render his movies at once mesmerizing and unsettling. At the same time, I have often wondered whether, at base, his films are nihilistic. (Sometimes, you will find people arguing his films attempt to critique or examine nihilism, but I think this is actually an easy way out of the question.) Haneke’s desire to discomfit by glaring into the most difficult, unvarnished, and taboo aspects of society can be justified on ethical terms—think of photography explicitly showing the violence of war—but, for this to be successful, it must not leave its audience bereft of hope. Despondence facilitates neither comprehension nor action. Indeed, Haneke isn’t interested in the verisimilitude of the grotesque per se. His work remains too stylized to ever render the camera invisible, though his violence never commingles with spectacle (which may be why it’s so disturbing). Instead, I imagine he’s interested in the hypocrisies latent within our conceptions of the obscene, the pornographic, the unspeakable, and, finally, in the moments when normally sublimated human behavior surfaces. Another way to think him through would be to use the old Gabriel Garcia Marquez quote: “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.” By virtue of his characters’ actions and his camera’s existence, Haneke often explores secret lives manifesting themselves where they shouldn’t.
The Piano Teacher merges the coldness of Haneke with the brilliance of Isabelle Huppert—if you want to know why she’s perpetually in the argument for greatest living actor, this film might be a good place to start—who plays a cold, repressive piano teacher whose need for control clashes with a masochistic desire requiring complete self-abasement. The stunted nature of mother-daughter relationships and their implicit violence and manipulation further underlines questions concerning the relationship between love (as conceptualized by individuals) and control. (Huppert’s signing onto the project remains the reason an Austrian director shooting in Vienna made the film in French—if you watch closely, certain German-speaking actors are dubbed, a choice which seems to have emerged from practical considerations but, naturally, can be read in various ways.) The role of conservatory piano professor offers Haneke an opportunity to examine the compulsive, obsessive, and destructive nature of artistic training—scrutinizing the tension between high-level performance and extreme commitment (in American film, Black Swan and Whiplash remain well-known exemplars of this idea). Colors, too, may be another interesting way to explore the work: white, red, and black dominate throughout. To my mind, Piano Teacher remains the best entry into Haneke’s film—much easier than the (at times revolting) German-language Funny Games (1997), but less accessible than the brilliant Caché (2005). Writing about his widely praised film Amour (2012), Francine Prose wondered: “Can a film be a masterpiece and still make you want to warn people not to see it?” The Piano Teacher evokes similar feelings. Whether, in the final analysis, the discomfort suffered by viewers offers access to a deeper psychological appreciation of the human condition very much remains an open question.
Go Down The Rabbit Hole With:
Michael Haneke — Code Unknown (2000)
Michael Haneke — Caché (2005)
Michael Haneke — The White Ribbon (2009)