Michael Haneke’s ‘Kelvin’s Book’ Has Been Shelved

We haven’t heard much from Michael Haneke since 2017’s “Happy End”. He just turned 81 years old. The man is a legend.

Earlier today, I wrote: Haneke’s style can still be seen everywhere in today’s modern-day moviemaking. His provocative films, filled with the utmost of cynicism, come to us in the form of an almost staged realism.

Despite the morbid subject matters he tackles, there’s always a witty irony behind the darkness — a sort of wink and a nod to the audience that what they are watching is very much a cinematic construction.

It’s an understatement to say that I’m a fan of his work — “Cache,” “The Piano Teacher,” “Funny Games” and “Amour” are some of the peak European cinema we’ve gotten in the 21st century.

The Austrian Film Museum celebrated Haneke’s birthday with a career retrospective and that’s where we learned that the latest project he was working on, a TV series, in English, titled “Kelvin’s Book,” has been shelved. It’s not happening.

“Kelvin's Book” was supposed to be a nine-episode miniseries in English. The plot was “set in a dystopian world and tells the adventurous story of a group of young people in a not too distant future. During a flight, they are forced to make an emergency landing outside of their home and are confronted with the actual face of their home country for the first time.”

However, it appears as though the project had been fully developed and mostly funded, with his own money, but the reason for the shelving wasn’t made quite clear, aside from blaming the pandemic for the delays. When asked if he’ll ever make another film, Haneke replied "Lassen wir uns überraschen..." which, when translated, means “Let’s be surprised.”

Although notoriously press shy, I had the immense pleasure of interviewing Haneke back in 2017 for “Happy End.” I vividly remember his comparison of social media as a “Machiavellian chain of horror.”

Happy End” proved to be very divisive, but it’s also the film that he needed to make. It was a sort of reinvention for Haneke, one that tackled his obsessive, familiar themes, but felt purposely polarizing and creatively freeing in its lack of a narrative structure. “Happy End” even had comedic moments, a rarity for the venerable Austrian filmmaker whose reputation has been that of heavy, morosely-driven dramas.

Now that I think about it, “Happy End” is an absolute perfect career capper for Haneke — his most meta-movie, a self-referential farce about all the themes that he’s tackled in his illustrious career. If he has retired, this was kind of a perfect film to go out on.