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The Director Did It theory applied to Time of the Wolf

posted 14 years ago by nihilistic_tyranny
2 replies | jump to latest

If you haven't seen very many Haneke films, you might want to skip this post because it contains spoilers...

Have any of you heard of this theory that in Cache the tapes were sent by the director Haneke himself, as if he's breaking the fourth wall.
I've heard this applied to Code Unknown, in that he was sending notes, and The White Ribbon, in that he burned down the houses and tortured the victims.
Do you think this could be applied to this one?
Clearly, after seeing Funny Games, Haneke loves to break the fourth wall.
The first time I heard the theory on Cache I thought it was a bit far fetched...but now I'm not so sure.
The more Haneke I watch the more plausible this seems.
Do you think maybe Haneke is the cause of the apocalypse in this film?
I know it's a stretch but it's such a weird (and interesting) concept.

If you don't believe in Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it, put this in your sig.

[–] Tom_Cruises_Testicles 14 years ago

I think the theory says more about the person who believes it then about the films themselves.

It kind of shows a need to explain things that are unexplainable without accepting the idea that some things just aren't meant to be known. Kind of like Death which is why we have religion.

I don't buy it, nor see what the meaning would be for it to be Haneke. His breaking the wall in Funny Games is clearly depicted and has a purpose. If the only purpose to this theory is to give an answer for these questions left unanswered, its too shallow for me to take seriously as his intentions.

[–] TocsinProductions 11 years ago

That's funny, I had always heard that theory, but that instead of it being Haneke, it was the audience sending the tapes, or what have you. That as the audience, our desire to see the characters in the film tormented further and further would ultimately lead the destruction of their lives.

In Cache, we have a desire to watch this normal family squirm, and so we send them video tapes of their front door and watch as it freaks them out, and so on, until everything they know and love is tarnished.

In Funny Games, the heroes of the story, to the audience, are the assailants. They get to break the fourth wall, and make contact with us when they, and we, know something dreadful is about to happen. When one of our heroes gets killed by the shotgun, the other reverses time with a TV remote to change the way it happens. Why a TV remote? Because the viewer is the god of this universe his movies are set in.

Perhaps that's why all of his characters are named Ann and Georges with a daughter Ava. They are a family continuously forced into horrible scenarios due to our want to see them in said scenarios.

That being said, it is just a theory of interpretation, always interesting to consider.

*The Director Did It* theory applied to Time of the Wolf

The Director Did It theory applied to Time of the Wolf