Der siebente Kontinent

Having spent a couple years now browsing thru IMDb, this is the first film I've seen that actually motivated me to leave a comment. I've seen 3 other (more recent) movies by Haneke: "Funny Games," "Code Unknown," and "The Piano Teacher." All of them disturbed me in their own special way--a feeling that I obviously don't mind getting from a film. "The 7th Continent," though, really blew me away in ways that I find difficult but necessary to describe.

This was Haneke's first theatrical film & apparently based on a true story--although I'm always skeptical of such disclaimers (the same was said about "Picnic at Hanging Rock," another great creepy film). It's divided into 3 parts: 1987, 1988, and 1989. Many scenes repeat themselves, and we get a clear sense that the family (dad, mom, daughter) is going through the motions of modern life. The banalities have a bizarre and uneasy edge to them, though, that really piles up by the time Part 3 arrives. All I have to say about the last 40 minutes is: OH MY GOD! I thought Gaspar Noe's "I Can't Sleep" (?) had an excruciating buildup, but that one (with all its explicitness) can't hold a candle to the amount of emotional and physical devastation packed into the conclusion of "Continent."

Fans of Haneke's later work should definitely check this one out to see the origin of his trademarks: no music score, seemingly pointless scenes that linger (often with little or no dialogue), off-putting camera angles (we sometimes see only the actors' hands or feet). While these techniques aren't always successful in his films ("Code" had some interminable moments), they all come together seamlessly in "Continent." A superb work!

Unnecessarily long and repetitive scenes intended to convey the boredom of the middle class Austrian family are undoubtedly a brilliant exhibition of cinematic art, but to me they only underline the totally unbelievable premise of the film. There was simply no reason for this family to be in despair: the man had a good white collar job and was recognized by his employer, the wife had a responsible entrepreneurial position and the daughter, while sometimes bizarre, was hardly a reason for her parents' perceived hopelessness. A man and a wife who are able to function effectively in every day life for the period of the film, three years, with no apparent psychoses, are not likely to engage in the incredible acts leading to the dramatic climax. The technical aspects of the film were interesting: short scenes, some without apparent relevance (the daughter's itch) with relatively long pauses between; the acting was a bit mechanical, sort of robotic, but that was undoubtedly intentional to convey the nihilistic mood of the protagonists. I didn't think the movie was worth watching, but most critics disagree, so if you enjoy this type of movie, then it is definitely for you.

Arguably, no greater cinematic interpreter of alienation exists in the world today than Austrian director Michael Haneke. Haneke shows us characters whose response to the world around them has deadened, people who have forgotten how to feel, how to love, how to care. The Seventh Continent, the first film of the trilogy that, with Benny's Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), depicts what Haneke has called "my country's emotional glaciation." Based on a true story of the disintegration of a middle class Austrian family, the film has little plot, only incident and observation. Divided into three parts and shot in episodic fragments, as in his 2002 film Code Unknown, each fragment is tenuously connected by fadeouts in which scenes start and end abruptly. A mood of banality is established early in an extended sequence in which a car moves through a car wash showing all the details of detergent sprays, high-pressure washers, and rotating brushes. At the end of the car wash is a travel poster beckoning tourists to visit Australia with a peaceful scene of sand and water, a motif that is repeated periodically during the film.

The Schobers, husband George (Dieter Berner), wife Anna (Birgit Doll), and daughter Eva (Leni Tanzer), are the happily married family living next door. George is an engineer and Anna an optician. Eva is a bright child of about eight with deep, expressive eyes. The family moves through their morning ritual with precision -- brushing their teeth, feeding the fish, and eating breakfast with little conversation or emotional interaction. The camera avoids their faces, focusing on mundane objects such as a bowl of cereal, an alarm clock, a fish tank, a package of congealed broccoli. This preoccupation with objects underscores the lack of connection between the characters and the things they have acquired. We get our first hint that something is not right when Eva pretends to her teacher that she has lost her eyesight. Anna questions her about the incident, promising not to harm her if she tells the truth but, when Eva admits to the lie, suddenly slaps her across the face ignoring the fact that she is a very troubled little girl. It is from here that the cracks begin to widen.

Depicting ritualistic actions like counting of money at a supermarket, the distractions of television, the meaninglessness of work, the film reflects the powerlessness and isolation of people in modern society. Haneke chronicles a family enslaved to the structures they have created, operating in a morass of emotional vacuity. The first hour may seem slow but it builds considerable tension until it reaches a shattering climax. Little by little the family disengages. George quits his job and writes letters to his parents hinting of something dark about to happen. In the absence of a spiritual core, without the possibility of meaningful action, the family sinks deeper into an abyss, unraveling and discarding the tightly woven structures of their life. Similar in theme to Todd Haynes' 1995 film Safe but with three times the power, The Seventh Continent is a ruthlessly intelligent film that burns its way into your psyche, leaving an indelible mark that will forever haunt your dreams.

A family, starved for attention and desperate to escape their daily life of abrasive routine, decide to turn things around one year and go against the routine. The film depicts their lives in three painful years of isolation, meaningless actions, and disillusionment. The first two-thirds of the film show the loud and hectic world that they are inexplicably a part of. Everything is just a series of actions. The semi-apocalyptic sequence shows a kind of desperate forcefulness of life that never breaks though, and the claustrophobic nature comes across as frighteningly unnerving. Tarkovsky would be proud.

The Seventh Continent was the second Michael Haneke film I had seen after The Piano Teacher. While I do not think that it is as honest a film as The Piano Teacher, I do applaud the fearless dynamic of the film to be completely devoid of style and of typical film conventions in order to depict a world that grows increasingly unpredictable and harrowing. The film is very Hitchcock-like in how it slowly and quietly builds it's themes involving desolate emotions. It is a tremendously scary film, but it is scary in a way that comes off a lot stronger after the film has finished and you allow it's images to swim around in your head for a while. The loss of passion and of feeling in a human being, to my knowledge, has never been depicted in such a pessimistic way.

This is a very angry film. This is a very resentful film. This is a film that celebrates sadness and anger and I hated watching it. When the film finds time to depict humanity, it writes it off like it is useless. What makes me even more angry about the film, in a way, is how you can almost feel Haneke behind the camera feeling resentful and wanting to punish the audience for wanting to view a film with a good story and a moving and engaging plot. Haneke goes so far out of his way to provide nothing in the way of narrative power and instead opts to craft an angry and traumatizing film. What makes the film work is it's power to provide some deeply haunting imagery and some truly worthwhile substance that I couldn't help but appreciate. Two of these three characters have complete control over everything that happens and they obviously feel that what they do in the final act of the film is most beneficial. Who am I to judge their own control over their lives. What pisses me off is how simple minded they are as characters. I just feel that Haneke prefers to emphasize these problems that these characters share, and what I am bothered by was that he didn't make it less obvious.

Overall, it's not one of Haneke's best films, but for a debut theatrical picture it is about as good as one can get. What strikes me as rather unusual about this film, when compared to his other films, is how it suffers from the same major problems that pretty much all of his films have. For example, he has never been able to build any sympathy with any of his characters, at least from the films of his that I've seen, and this film is no different in that regard. The film of his that I personally think suffers the most from it is Funny Games (both versions). With his picture Cache, it only became a problem early on in the film, and in Benny's Video and Hour of the Wolf it helped add to the atmosphere while damaging the humanity of the films in question. I think that The Seventh Continent shows plenty of promise with Haneke and is extremely riveting at times, but it's easily the absolute worst place to start if you are interested in getting into his films. It will not leave you with a good impression of his work, and only after watching Funny Games and Cache (his most easily accessible films in my opinion) will you be able to catch his reoccurring themes.

A powerful, disturbing film, shot in a highly idiosyncratic style. Michael Haneke's dissection of Austrian alienation is astonishingly effective. The style is, for the first part of the film, full of such close-ups that we don't see the characters' faces for nearly half an hour, but we share with them their view of the breakfast cereals, shoes and shopping. It should be boring, but is instead gripping, a quiet build-up to the prosaic horrors to come.

It is hard to comment without revealing some of these horrors, but the overall effect is shattering, tolerable only because Haneke avoids any real involvement with the characters and their motivations. With hindsight this is a weakness, and I reached the end of the film with the feeling 'what was that all about?'. But it is a film to reflect on, unlike any other that I have seen. Don't miss it - unless you are feeling depressed!