people who love haneke's films are often very smart, and many people who don't like them are stupid.
that's why it's so hard being intelligent, but not liking haneke's cinema.
Who told you? ;-)
Movester
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You messed with his fruit pie. After that, he had nothing to lose.
That's kind of ridiculous. While it takes a certain level of intelligence (or at least a decent understanding of cinema as an art form) to appreciate his films, the inverse is not true. If someone doesn't "get" something, or doesn't generally appreciate dark, cerebral foreign dramas, it's really of no relation to their intelligence (or lack thereof). I know plenty of incredibly insightful, intelligent people who simply do not enjoy films like Haneke's. It's just a matter of taste.
shareI recognize that you're being ironic here - right? - but what makes me uneasy about this post is that some people actually believe that appreciating a book or a film entitles them to intelligence. This is just false.
A movie for me isn't about the synthesis of ideas or symbolism or references; it's about my visceral experience while watching; my response to the story, acting and form. When people tell me: "I just watch movies to be entertained" I respond: "So do I!" Because entertainment for me isn't a state of passivity. But my preferences hardly qualify me as intelligent or stupid.
You just said it!
[deleted]
i agree.
shareThere are different levels of intelligence. Most people i know that appreciate artistic films tend to have above average intelligence, and, i'm guessing, a reasonably high EQ too. But not everyone cares about film, or the arts, that's the problem, so it's difficult to judge. I know book smart people that only watch blockbusters. They aren't stupid, but they are often immature, culturally ignorant, and just plain lazy, for the most part. A few of them also have very demanding jobs that sap most of their energy, so it's understandable why, after a hard and stressful day's work, they aren't in the mood to watch a 'moody European drama' on the average weeknight. So while the interest may exist, time does not permit, and is basically a luxury they cannot afford to waste.
I'm not a big fan of Haneke, but he is interesting, and i do enjoy European cinema.
I'd love to click "Like" on your comment. Btw, look what facebook done to us...
shareI am a time traveler from 2010. I came to 2012 (two earth years into the future) to warn you about making the mistake of writing "EQ" instead of "IQ" two years ago. I don't know how my warning will help you, but I hope it will.
Take care, St Anus (really? I should have also warned you about your poor choice of the username. Maybe two more years into the future I will)
I'm positive he purposefully wrote EQ (emotional intelligence) instead of IQ.
shareThanks for the compliment?
shareThis thread does illustrate something about maturity. It's made it this far without a single snipe or bout of name-calling.
shareI like around 6 of the directors movies, but absolutely hate White Ribbon. For the length of the film, and white subtitles in a B&W movie, it was just boring to me, save the cinematography.
I know many intelligent people that don't like his work much, as they find it just too mean spirited.
^^That's another valid reason. I find those same people tend to avoid films by Lars Von Trier and Todd Solondz too.
share1) Oooh! Do you want an award for being in the cinema bourgeoisie?
2) Comprehension is contextual.
3) There is such thing as personal taste and it doesn't correlate with intelligence.
Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM
I think these directors are wildly different in their treatment of humanity. Mean-spirited is a valid point for Haneke, as I feel like sometimes he doesn't think things through beyond contempt and the sensational. Solondz may be closer to this, but does so with a sense of humor that redeems him, I think, and von Trier is on a different plane. It's not that Haneke is difficult to watch because he reveals things novel or teases apart things about humanity, cruelty, etc., but because he instead has only cursory commentary and closed-minded judgements that look for no explanation or insight instead, and if he believes there is none to be found, does not explore why this possible is closed off either.
I think this is an important distinction when talking about a director's success when working with these themes, and one that is easily mistaken when caught up in movie-hype. Just leaving someone with disgust or empathy for a vague antihumanist meditation on discontinuity of ethics, etc., isn't enough, unless you are just trying to attract sensation and fans. Such an act surely gets people to think that they are thinking, but doesn't reveal much more than the fact that the film hinges on a demand that the audience is incurred with a specific type of frustration that doesn't lead them anywhere new, while believing that they are embracing a difficult novel truth. von Trier doesn't try to indoctrinate or fool the audience with what they are seeing. That is not to say that is the right way to do things, but I think it is more successful than Haneke's method. This is clear even in the infamous 'rewind' scene in 'Funny Games'. That the audience is made 'complicit' and the frustration incurred by the failure of the murder only nod to the function of violence in a subject, but does not explore it. The shock of it is supposed to carry its philosophical and emotional weight, but crumbles with the least bit of attention. The antihumanist meditation on the place of ethics in a system of subjects-worlds is then wafted through and instead subsumed by smug satisfaction in the trick itself. So, violence is then given no new position, is already taken as internal to human subjects, and the idea gains little momentum, which seems like it might be important for an hour and forty minute movie primarily concerned with violence.
i love all of hanekes work and i dnt consider myself to be too intelligent lol
shareThe op is correct. I read in an article in a recent edition of Scientific American that scientists are using Haneke's films to test the intelligence of mice. At the end of each film the mice have to write a 1500 word analysis. This has created results far better than cheese in a maze.
Of course the idiots at PETA are claiming this is animal abuse.
snobbish much?
I'm 23, I'm a member of Mensa and speak four languages fluently including french and I found this movie to be one of the worst movies I ever saw.
If I meet someone that loved this movie I would just say they have poor taste in movies or that they see movies for different reasons than I do.
You can be intelligent and still have bad taste in cinema.
"Who do you think you are, Bill Clinton? You're a comptroller!"
I agree. Heneke's movies are by and large pseudophilosophy wrapped up in the minimal amount of consideration and rhetoric that you must take to make a 'dark' movie about humanity. Everything in his movies exists to serve some greater metaphor that arrives, at best, at sciolism of contemporary thought. No, I don't dislike slow movies, foreign movies, dark movies, philosophical movies, or anything of the sort. I DO however get bored when I can tell that something is just playing at being all of these. His ideas are excessively explicit, unoriginal, and often internally contradictory, and it seems fortuitously so. I guess I can see it as entertainment, but this and 'Funny Games' were two of the worst movies I have seen in recent years. If you are going to take on postcolonialism and modern ideas on anxiety, you had better come equipped intellectually, cinematically, and emotionally, or it will be transparent to anyone moderately-versed in storytelling and philosophy. If that is what this movie is purported to stand on, it falls flat.
shareI don´t see anything about Cache that suggests Haneke isn´t "intellectually, cinematically or emotionally equipped" to "take on postcolonialism". He does generally have a tendency towards being explicit & heavy handed, but this number here looks very much like an aesthetically accomplished take on a serious subject; it takes a well defined moral stance, but is hardly overly philosophical, pseudo- or otherwise.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
old post but necro.
You don't see anything to suggest that because there is nothing to suggest that. Haneke studied philosophy, so he's perfectly well versed in it. There's mounds of scholarly literature analyzing cache and none of it concludes that there's no philosophical merit to the film, or that it isn't a serviceable take on transcultural tensions in a post-colonial society.
There's big time overlap between the kind of repression displayed in the film on the individual level and the kind of repression displayed by french society, straight from the mouth of "memory studies" scholars and film scholars. (Guy Austin, Cybelle McFadden, D.I. Grossvogel,Jonathan Thomas,Ipek Celik,all good names to search along with Cache, if you have database access) The entire film is structured in a way that the past impacts the present and is reevaluated and given new meaning. The opening scene functions that way as a microcosm, and the film functions that way as a whole.
I mean, to suggest that the film isn't extremely rich in both form and content is just ridiculous and pretentious.
"snobbish much?
I'm 23, I'm a member of Mensa and speak four languages fluently"
snobbish much?