Playback / Funny Games
Funny Games · 2007
Opening Sequence
A family plays a classical-music guessing game in the car — then the titles arrive as a wall of screaming noise the characters cannot hear.
Watch for
- The diegetic opera the family choose and can hear, versus the non-diegetic noise that replaces it.
- The moment the title card appears, and what the sound does to your body before anything happens on screen.
- How calmly the images continue while the soundtrack turns hostile.
A worked reading · COCA
CContention
Haneke uses a violent sound cue over gentle images to warn the audience about the film they have chosen to watch.
OObservation
The family listen to opera in the car in wide, calm shots; the titles then slam in over a screaming hardcore track while the same placid aerial imagery continues.
CConnotation
Sound that the characters cannot hear belongs to the storyteller, not the world — using it aggressively codes the film as an assault on the viewer rather than an entertainment.
AAudience
We are unsettled and implicated before a single event occurs, which is precisely the film's argument about screen violence.
Your turn
- Which sounds can the characters hear, and which are only for us?
- What expectation does the title-card sound set up for the film?
- How can sound alone position an audience against what the images show?
For teachers
CONTENT NOTE: the clip itself contains no violence, but the film is a deliberately disturbing MA15+ work about screen violence — preview before use and consider a Year 11/12 audience. Unbeatable as a diegetic/non-diegetic contrast.
