Michael Haneke is Retired, For Now

It’s an understatement to say that I’m a fan of Haneke’s— “Cache,” “The Piano Teacher,” “Funny Games” and “Amour” are cinematic landmarks. Sadly, we haven’t heard much from Haneke since 2017’s “Happy End”. He turned 82 in the summer, and as far as we know, he hasn’t been working on any projects.

It turns out that Haneke has retired from filmmaking, at least according to Isabelle Huppert who took part in a masterclass session at the Lumiere Film Festival alongside Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux.

“Do you think you can coax Haneke out of retirement?” asked Fremaux.
“Not sure,” Huppert replied.

Huppert has starred in four Haneke films, “The Piano Teacher,” “Time of the Wolf,” “Amour” and “Happy End.” She still regularly speaks to the filmmaker, and recently told IndieWire that she’s been pushing him to make one more film:

He’s doing OK. We are in touch, yes, we are in touch, but you can’t have Michael Haneke doing anything he doesn’t want to do. Obviously, he’s been not busy for the past six years, as you say, and I don’t know. I have no idea if he will work again, if we will work together again. He’s been through a difficult time after COVID. I don’t know enough. He’s in good shape. I can only make wishes that he will be working again

Haneke’s style can still be seen everywhere in today’s cinema. Every year, there are an innumerable amount of films that get compared to Haneke’s stripped down brand of austere cinema. 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, there’s always a whiff of 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.

Last year, the Austrian Film Museum celebrated Haneke’s birthday with a career retrospective and that’s when we learned that the English TV series Haneke was working on, titled “Kelvin’s Book,” had been shelved.

“Kelvin's Book” was supposed to be a nine-episode miniseries in English. The project had been fully developed and mostly funded, with his own money, but the reason for the shelving wasn’t made clear, aside from blaming the pandemic for the delays.

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,” Haneke’s last, and maybe final film, proved to be very divisive with critics; it was filled with darkly comic moments, a rarity for the venerable Austrian filmmaker whose reputation has been that of heavy, morosely-driven dramas. And yet, “Happy End” turns out to be 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 the perfect film to go out on.