A person i admire

Today I want to introduce a very admirable person to you. It’s an Austrian person who has been honoured a lot recently. No, it’s not Conchita, even though she would be worth a blog post too for being one of the most inspiring Austrians. Who I want to talk about today is Michael Haneke.

Why him?
I’ve always been impressed by his work. Recently I watched a movie called ‘My Life’ on Youtube, in which he, his wife and actors from his movies talk about his way of proceeding. Furthermore, he tells some anecdotes of his life, and extracts from Haneke-movies are shown. I didn’t know anything about his personality before, maybe even thought that he’s a little vain because of the Oscar and his fame. But, he’s nothing like that. After the presentation of the Oscar in 2013, while all the other stars went partying, Michael Haneke took his wife out for dinner. She is his biggest critic and the one who keeps him down-on-Earth.

Keep it simple

I think most of you had already known the director before he finally received his Oscar nearly two years ago. The film he is probably most famous for is The White Ribbon, which is a black-and-white drama film set in Germany at the time shortly before World War I. I have to admit that I’ve never seen this one, but I’ve seen a few others of Haneke’s movies, so I know the style of his work. There are some things that most of his films have in common, the typical Haneke-features.

What a viewer notices while watching, also what actors say who have worked with the Austrian, is, that nothing in his movies happens accidentally. Every step the characters take and every single move they make has been planned into detail. Haneke isn’t the kind of producer that needs many different versions of a scene to choose from. He sees the whole film in his head before the scenes have even been shot. This may all sound extremely difficult, to me it does, but in ‘My Life’ the director says that his films are more difficult for the audience to watch than they are for him and the actors to make. Sounds quite hard to believe, but actually it’s true. When you watch a Haneke movie you will notice that everything is kept simple. You won’t find any vast effects or dramatic melodies. Haneke shows pure reality.

The cruel reality

Has a Haneke movie ever shocked you more than a thriller or horror film? It wouldn’t be surprising. The secret behind it is reality. A horror movie never really causes the fear that the situation we see on the screen could also happen to us. A movie by Michael Haneke, whether it deals with a shooting spree or with one of two marriage partners suddenly incurring an apoplexy, always raises the question: ‘What if this happened to me?’.

Violence - a regular feature of his work

In a lot of the movies violence plays a major part. From ‘small outrages’ like beating a child to ‘big outrages’ like a shooting spree, almost any act of violence is to be seen. Don’t think of Michael Haneke as a violently obsessed person now. In truth he is afraid of violence intensely, even though he never was a victim of it. All he wants to do is to show us how the world is. He also wants to point out that any person could be able to practise any kind of violence if they were in the right situation. When we hear about terrible crimes people committed we always automatically think of them as terrible people. But, do we know what has made them become like that?

If you have seen a few of Haneke’s movies and liked them, I can only recommend ‘My Life’. It’s interesting because it’s not what one expects from an Oscar-winner. If you don’t know anything of his work yet, try out something completely new and watch one of the films. It’s not for everyone, and don’t expect any fairytale-like, or clear endings. But it's worth it. Go and find out for yourself!