Ari Aster on Michael Haneke

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

[00:00:00]Let's go. So, I I I I call this European miserabilism. I was really obsessed especially with Michael Haneke. Piano Teacher was the way in and more than anything Piano Teacher, Cache, and The White Ribbon are for me. Mhm. Just Very important. huge. As a kid, I loved Funny Games. That Now I find it a little scolding in a way that's like not so exciting, but I but the filmmaking is incredible and you know and I and and and Darius Khondji who shot Eddington um who's just the best guy in the world, you know, he shot the remake of Funny Games and Benny's Video equally disturbing uh and you know, very Bressonian like self-consciously Bressonian. The way that they frame close-ups it's so The guy is just so obsessed with Bresson. You can just see it. It's just like the his whole uh his his his whole career is is just it it it I don't know. Bresson is just everywhere there.

[00:01:04]Michael Haneke's first film, the first of his trilogy, I think he made the mistake of calling it the emotional glaciation trilogy, but he's disowned that title and this is a perfect film that follows a family on the same day three different years. So, it's three acts. The first two acts it follows their their rituals eating food, driving the kid to school, picking stuff up from a hardware store, going through a car wash. And so, the first third is that with very little speaking.

[00:01:33]The second third is that same day 1 year later, same thing, and the last third on the same day the next year destroying all of their possessions and killing themselves.

[00:01:53]And it's pretty amazing. Michael Haneke was very very important to me growing up especially Piano Teacher and Cache, but his first films they just call it the trilogy here, but I I I think he called it in one interview the emotional glaciation trilogy and I think he regretted saying that. So, that's probably why it doesn't say it here. Haneke is always talking about Bresson being his favorite filmmaker and like the only the only filmmaker he really cares about. And uh you really see that in these films which are very Bressonian. Like they're kind of like [clears throat] you know, the actors are basically functioning as models. Um Benny's Video is a great film about Nazi Youth and the 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance um is a is you know, a a great kind of like trial run for what he ended up doing with Code Unknown, The Seventh Continent is one of the most perfect films ever made and very upsetting.