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or a little bit of Hanekey Panekey

Funny Games was originally released in Austria in 1997. But, like many of Michael Haneke’s films (Caché, The Piano Teacher, Code Unknown), it only made the arthouse circuit in North America. It is the granddaddy of home invasion movies. This is half the reason why Funny Games US, released in early 2008, may seem to someone who hasn’t yet watched it a bit like ground that has already been covered by other films–its predecessor certainly inspired a few. The other half of the reason is, of course, that it’s more or less a shot-for-shot remake of the 1997 version.

Let’s be frank: there aren’t many directors who can get away with something like this. Hey, I made this great movie back in 1997. You didn’t see it because you don’t watch subtitled movies? Well, how about I make it again? In English? Or, more specifically, in American? Sound good?

But then again, Funny Games breaks all the rules. First, it isn’t frightening. It creeps the hell out of you, but apart from one jump in the first few minutes, it’s a realistic film, and so has a pretty even keel. (To contribute to this documentary sense, which is brutally undermined by other aspects of the film, there is no score. The only music is listened to by the characters as part of the soundtrack of their lives, not of the film.) The villains, Paul and Peter, are terrifying, but only insofar as they aren’t really that scary. That’s not all. The action more or less finishes at the end of act two, with thirty minutes of screen time to go. The characters talk to the audience, not quite à la Ferris Bueller, but directly. The death of one of the principles breaks a pretty serious taboo. And in the film’s second-best moment, the suspension of disbelief gets tossed into a blender when Paul scrambles for the remote. (The film’s best moment, without spoiling anything, is a slowly rolling golf ball.)

The rules are broken because Funny Games is ultimately a movie about the audience’s relationship to it. If you enter a theatrical experience willing to suspend your disbelief, then what you’re seeing is, to you, in that moment, real. And if it’s real, then you’re complicit. You’ve given tacit consent by paying to see what happens. So whose side are you on, really?

There are some who would disagree, but I think that Funny Games absolutely deserved its second chance. Haneke made the original film to address violence in Hollywood movies, so a wider audience is entirely in order. But a remake is a tricky business. There are a few believability issues that have to be addressed between 1997 and 2008 (and are, usually in a comical way, such as a character pointing out that something doesn’t make sense). There’s also the enormous task of recasting roles that have already been played spectacularly well.

And therein lies some difficulty. The actors have to make their characters their own, in spite of having each frame blocked out for them in advance. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. The differences between Susanne Lothar’s Anna and Naomi Watts’ Ann are quite interesting (indeed, Haneke agreed to do the film only if Naomi Watts signed on). Ulrich Mühe (The Lives of Others) is gentle and bewildered, perhaps even emasculated, as Georg, whereas Tim Roth’s George is a bit of a tough guy, which doesn’t seem to work as well. Frank Giering and Brady Corbet are both solid as sidekick Peter. But matching Arno Frisch’s pleasant, reasonable, mind-blowing Paul presents the biggest challenge for the remake. Michael Pitt rallies and even holds his own, but in the end, he can’t touch Frisch.

Verdict: you should see either one or both versions of Funny Games. But I’ve got to say it, in full-on film snobbery force: if you’re only going to see one, it should be the original. And if you can get Paul’s smirking face out of your head in under three days, then you’ve got one up on me.