If you ever decide to watch a Michael Haneke film make sure you’re in the right mood for something either punishing or provocative. It’s not to dismiss the Austrian auteur’s singular vision, but embarking into the world of his films is to often have your spirit and soul drained out. His work is rigorous, restrained and controlled cinema with an emphasis on the dehumanization of modern society, all done through the prism of the most potently realistic acts of violence imaginable.
Haneke’s use of violence is one of the more disturbing assets of his style. It usually comes in short bursts and in ways that are both shocking and disturbing. He knocks you down with his absolute and masterful control. The mise en scene is tightly fashioned in a detail-obsessed manner, with every tiny detail needing to count because what he’s trying to do is not only horrify you, but shock your system with memorably precise visual and sound. It is the complete and utter control of the viewer and the response to the act of violence that makes it all the more horrifying.
“Haneke makes us hear and see terrible things. Despite his critical success the backlash has been extreme,” goes the opening of Elsie Walker’s video essay “Taking Time to Hear…” which takes into account Haneke’s use of silence as a way to give shape and form to the content. In other words, the wordless interludes that proceed Haneke’s most torturous sequences are meant to act as a kind of salvation.
The video is meant as a rebuttal to the critics that claim he is a sadistic and cruel filmmaker. Walker seems to be implying that they are missing the point. As the video shows us, Haneke asks the viewer to hear the victims’ pain compassionately through slyly inserted silent interludes. Walker also states that “this quiet is not about the aggressors, but the victims, including the people who make themselves suffer by hurting others.”
Six acts of violence from six different films are given as examples. From a mother tied up and bound, standing next to her dead son’s body right after he’s been shot in “Funny Games,” to the famous suicide in “Cache,” Haneke has always maintained a hyper-tight control of what he wants his audience to see, feel and think. If you’re up for it, it can make for absolutely devastating cinema.
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Taking place during Justine’s first week at school, the film is placed in a surreal atmosphere, as Ruben Impens’s photography uses the brutalist architecture of the college with eerily spacious wide shots reminiscent of “Suspiria” meshed with the production design of “Carrie” (with”Raw” eerily paying tribute to the pigs’ blood scene from Brian De Palma‘s film).
To say that Justine’s first taste of blood does something to her psyche would be an understatement. After all the cruel hazing, one would conclude that the only way she can survive the first semester of this vet school would be to indulge in the nastier activities she’s experienced. That is, of course, what happens to Justine, whose newly found love for uncooked meat reaches a pinnacle of delectability too juicy to reveal in this review, but be forewarned that this newfound love of animal meats goes to greater depths of the food chain and eventually mixes in some unwarranted victims. And it’s Marillier’s committed performance as Justine that carries you through every over-the-top, hard-to-believe twist — she makes it seem real.
Some critics have complained that the director underused the talented Cotillard by giving her a background role that never fully delivers on her potential. The actress’ rebuttal? “My character Catherine says very little, but when she talks it’s as if a flood of incoherences came out of her mouth: it’s mostly aborted sentences and redundancies. At first I was terrified by my text and then I understood that her monologues were like the sound of silence,” said Cotillard.
Who's "they," exactly? The Illuminati? The Deep State? Hard to say. The film premiered at Italy's Matera Film Festival on November 10. No reviews have trickled in yet.