In 1997 two films have systematically dealt with the subject of violence. Both of them were made by German directors; Michael Haneke’s Funny Games was produced in Germany, whereas Wim Wenders’s The End of Violence is an American production. Haneke’s film found its way into international movie houses due to a unique scandal in Cannes while that of Wenders film was met with considerable critical acclaim in the US after having flopped at the Cannes film festival. It seems to me that both films contribute enormously to an understanding of violence and the inherent problems of its aesthetic reflection.

In Haneke’s opening sequence an upper-middle class family is on its way to some kind of boring lake in Germany, their jeep towing a sailing boat. They arrive and exchange a few routine lines with some neighbours. The neighbours have two visitors (Arno Frisch and Frank Giering), nice boys apparently: youngsters with white gloves who must have been raised on their fathers’ gold cards. Father and son (Ulrich Mühe and Stefan Clapoznyski) prepare the sailing boat for a trip while their mother (Susanne Lothar) starts preparing lunch in the kitchen. Business as usual, as it seems. Then one of the two strangers appears in the garden, asking for eggs in the most polite and friendly manner. He receives them, drops them (apparently in an act of clumsiness), asks for more eggs, breaks them again (while constantly apologizing), and finally drops the woman’s cellular phone, which happens to lie on the counter, in a washbasin. As the family gradually realizes, this was the overture to an incredibly sadistic and murderous “funny game.” A game which the boys have been playing for their daily entertainment. Once the game is started nothing is the same anymore. At the end, the entire family will be dead, killed one by one, gradually and systematically. It seems that the youngsters exercise a kind of satanic cruelty, which was raised on thousands of cheap videos and video games. Once a game is finished, the two strangers move on to another summerhouse and another garden, asking for eggs in the most polite manner. It is time for another “funny game.”

Instead of concentrating upon violence itself, however, the film focuses on the suffering of the victims by showing the agony in their faces in long close-ups. In this manner, Haneke tries to eliminate the “sales factor” which is always inherent in any representation of violence. Simultaneously, Haneke presents the massacre of an entire family in a highly playful manner, which deliberately undermines all existing concepts of Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil. Asked why they are doing it, the youngsters just repeat the question: “Yes, why are we doing it?” The two adolescent killers use violence without any explanation; for them it seems to equal an act of absolute freedom and self-fulfillment. The result is a highly striking inversion of the famous Cartesian turning point to “I kill, therefore I am.” Causality rests entirely in itself. At the same time, the youngsters constantly chat and use logical deductions and moral argumentation in order to make up for the apparent lack of “reason.” They construct a guilt in the name of which the victims have to be tortured more and more. They also engage in bets. “Shall we bet that all of you will be dead by tomorrow morning?" Basically these are bets on the killers’ omnipotence. The final increase to the victims’ agony comes when the strangers ask the mother to send a child’s prayer to her “personal God” so that she can choose her own mode of dying freely. The result is a kind of semiotic hell into which audience and victims alike are drawn. The film equals a process of complete moral inversion, which leaves only the principles of accuracy and timing intact. Fulfilling a certain time schedule and not deviating from it seems to be the killers’ one and only concern.

Haneke’s approach aims directly at the audience. The director wants us to realize that an element of voyeurism is always part of any representation of violence. This is most obvious when one of the strangers is shot by the mother. His friend simply rewinds the video recording of the scene and starts the tape anew. Then the youngster smiles directly into the camera and asks us to participate in his bets. Violence, it seems, does not only exist for the entertainment of the killers but for the viewer’s pleasure as well. If the youngster had really died during that scene, his untimely “departure” would have deprived us of a lot of “funny games” to come. Haneke’s aesthetic basis is a kind of conspiracy theory, which presents itself as a very strong critique of the representation of violence in mainstream film. Basically the entire movie can be summarized by two central messages: all violence is horrible for the victims, and any visual reflection of violence is voyeuristic by nature. Thus, the director aims at the education of his audience by using film as a means of moral purification. In that respect, Funny Games combines elements of a left-wing critique of consciousness with the moral impact of the Enlightenment.

Wim Wenders’s The End of Violence is also a film with a very specific “message.” Based on a series of narrative “Short Cuts,” the film presents a kind of cinematic dystopia reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984. A huge network of cameras records virtually everything that is happening in the city of Los Angeles. Former NASA scientist Ray Bering (Gabriel Bryne) tests the system at an observatory overlooking the city. By chance he becomes witness to an assault on Holywood producer Mike Max (Bill Pullmann) during which the two assailants are shot by an unknown hitman. Fearing further attacks on his life, Max escapes and hides with a group of Mexican immigrants while his wife Page (Andie MacDowell) gradually takes over his business matters. A detective (Loren Dean) falls in love with one of Mike’s stuntgirls (Tracy Lind), and Bering has an affair with his Latin American maid.

Wenders’s cinematic patchwork is based upon the assumption that violence is an inseparable part of modern life, as it is conveyed by a rap poem at the centre of the film. It seems that the road to an “end of violence” leads to a life somewhere at the fringes of society, as it is exemplified by Mike Max. Living in the company of the Mexicans, he gets acquainted with a completely different existence based upon solidarity and human kindness. As a result, Mike gradually learns to question his former existence so that he finally leaves the name of Mike Max behind. His wife shows the opposite development. Having initially dreamt of a simple life in Guatemala, Page gradually abandons the idea and turns into an extremely tough and ruthless businesswoman. Here Wenders reiterates a pattern which has been running through all his early German films from the 70s; becoming part of the “system” equals a loss of identity whereas withdrawal and rejection of established role patterns means being on the road to self-fulfillment. The same pattern is at work when Bering’s maid, who has been used by the FBI to gather information about the scientist, risks her life by publicly abandoning her role as informant. It seems that Wenders regards this act of refusal as a moment of liberation; for him, the way to an “End of Violence” is inevitably connected to a change of consciousness which leads the individual to a process of questioning his/her former existence.

However, Wenders’s cinematic meditation upon the “end of violence” is even more effective in its inherent critique of mainstream film. Wenders, a former icon of German independent cinema, has managed to retain an enormous degree of independence within an established Holywood apparatus; unlike his character Mike Max, he tries to subvert the system by challenging predominant modes of representation. Although Wenders “tightened up” his various “short cuts” by re-editing the film for the American market, his patchwork aesthetics still challenges dominant modes of representation. The same holds true for the director’s tendency not to represent violence at all; for example, we watch the attack on Mike Max with Bering’s eyes whose monitor only shows black silhouettes acting against a greenish background. Representing the viewer at the cinema, Bering gradually learns to make sense of the images by placing them within a narrative context, which can only be created in his mind. Violence, which seems to be the ultimate message, is also the outcome of a certain type of visual domination leaving no room for our creative imagination.

It seems to me that Haneke’s and Wenders’s approaches have one common denominator. Haneke aims at a moment of recognition, which makes the viewer realize that the depiction of violence requires a voyeuristic accomplice. Wenders tries to subvert existing narrative conventions by emphasizing the role of the viewer in the creation of a film. However, both directors regard film as a means of visual liberation; they put forward the notion that violence is not only a social problem but a question of the conventions of its aesthetic representation as well.