Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria

3 The Triumph of Hyperreality: A Baudrillardian Reading of Michael Haneke’s Cinematic Oeuvre

3 The Triumph of Hyperreality: A Baudrillardian Reading of Michael Haneke’s Cinematic Oeuvre Sophie Boyer Abstract This chapter explores Michael Haneke’s cinematic oeuvre, focusing on one of its recurring themes: postmodern society’s media-manipulated reality, a theme clearly informed by French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s provocative thought. My investigation starts with Haneke’s application of the concepts of hyperreality and simulation; it then turns to his reflections on (and critique of) the proliferation of images and the ensuing breakdown of communication; finally, it addresses the Baudrillardian notion of fatal strategy at play in Haneke’s artistic statement. I nLetempsduloup(TheTimeoftheWolf,2003),AustrianfilmdirectorMichael Haneke depicts the fate of a family struggling for its survival in the aftermath ofanapocalypticeventleftunexplained.Theopeningsequenceconfrontsthe viewer with the brutal killing of the family’s father at the hands of strangers squatting in their country house. The mother has thus no choice but to embark on an ominous journey with her adolescent daughter, Eva, and her son, Benny; the world has now become a place ruled by terror in which everyone is held hostage. Halfway through the film, daughter Eva retreats to what seems like a former office in the abandoned train station where they have found refuge, in order to write to her deceased father: “My dear, dear Papa! It’s really difficult to find words for all this, but when it’s impossible to talk to anyone, it feels so stifling. […] I guess this all must seem pretty jumbled. And it really is. In fact, that’s why I’m writing. Because it’s so jumbled and I hope, by writing it down, to see clearer. I want to tell you in order to try to give you an idea of life just 43 now.”1 While we hear Eva read the content of her letter in voice-over, the camera pauses over the remnants of a pin board: among dog-eared pictures, random invoices, and torn centerfolds hangs a reproduction of Albrecht Dürer’s 1525 watercolourTraumgesicht(DreamVision).Thecloudsofrainthreateningtoflood the earth, which Dürer sketched upon waking from a nightmare some five centuriesago ,unmistakablyremindcontemporaryviewersofanatomicmushroom, an image that—regardless of the historical era—evokes catastrophe. Much like Dürer,whoanticipatedtheendoftheworldinhisvisions,andEva,whoprojects her anxieties onto the paper in a desperate attempt to bring order and structure to a dislocated world, so too is Michael Haneke pursuing a similar goal, namely, to bear witness to the malaise of postmodern reality in the face of its very disappearance , to try to give his audience an “image”2 of life just now. The disintegration of human relationships, the prevalence of an insidious violence in both the public and private spheres, the manipulation of reality by mass media—these are all topics that permeate Michael Haneke’s work. Over the last two decades, Haneke has successfully provoked both his admirers and his detractors with nine feature films that clearly address these challenging contemporary themes. Although the majority of Haneke’s films are set in his home country, Austria, the director has repeatedly cautioned against short-sighted criticism. Indeed, multi-layered alienation processes know no national boundCHALLENGING VIEWING HABITS 44 Albrecht Dürer, Das Traumgesicht, 1525. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna aries and cannot be labelled as a typically Austrian phenomenon. In an interview conducted in 2005 by Serge Toubiana, director of the Cinémathèque française, Haneke explained how he always tries to be precise while avoiding being local. Concerning his first film, Der siebent Kontinent (The Seventh Continent) (1989), he asserted: “It’s not a portrait of Austria. It’s a portrait of rich countries.”3 Similarly , in a later interview conducted upon the release of Caché (Hidden, 2005), Hanekereiteratedthisstancewhenheclaimedthateverycountryhaditsshameful secrets (Alion 11), thereby implying that Caché should not strictly be interpreted as an attack upon France’s colonial past, but should rather be read in a much larger context. Consistent with this universal perspective on problems that deeply affect Western society, the second half of Haneke’s cinematographic productions (starting in 2000) have been made in France, while an American remake of his earlier Funny Games (1997)—by Haneke himself—was released inMarch2008.Assuch,thevarioustitleswithwhichhisfilmshavebeenstamped further betray his all-encompassing way of studying theconditio humana in postmodern times. Indeed, while Haneke understood his first three films within the framework of a loosely conceived project bearing the ominous title of “glaciation trilogy”4 (Vergletscherungs-Trilogie), film scholars have ascribed to the same cycletheequallygrimtitleof“civilwartrilogy”(B...