‘Art is there to have a stimulating effect, if it earns its name. You have to be honest, that's the only thing.’—Michael Haneke, in an interview The voice, now over 70, is usually candid, bumptious; the statements – zealous, with the pang and the patina of a reproach – typically fixed at the high pitch of imperiousness. A choice remark: ‘Why do I rape the viewer? I try to rape him into being reflective, and into being intellectually independent and seeing his role in the game of manipulation.’ Or, another: ‘I look at the viewer directly, I talk to him, I wink at him. I do this again
and again to show how much one can manipulate.’ More cargo, dispatched this time by critics – the voice has changed, the statements have not: ‘Haneke does want to teach us a lesson, though, to call us to task for our complicity with villains and our enjoyment of screen violence.’ And again: ‘In Haneke’s films, the viewer is implicated in the horrors that unfold on the screen; there is nowhere to run, not even after the film has stopped.’ Of course, Haneke’s arrival as one of the indisputably major directors of th ... [Click to read more]








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