Le temps du loup Time of the Wolf Michael Haneke 2002 France / Austria / Germany1st time; DVD A mother and her two children are caught up in famine and a severe shortage of supplies when their husband and father is shot at their holiday home. Every great director seems, at one point or another, to make their version of the apocalypse. Haneke's is a great film that outstays its welcome but lingers afterwards even so, thanks in large sum to the consistent dreariness and the final moments. It begins in an incredibly tense fashion, similar to something from Funny Games, and pits its characters and audience thereafter into a bleak vision of life; it looks beautiful but feels curiously out of place in view of the director's other work: it's hermetic and not concerned directly with the 'real' world, and the visuals are crisp and dark but camera movement feels rather ordinary. Fascinating and interesting because of that, though, and the narrative has a fine sense of falling apart upon itself, a bit like Videodrome's structure, in that we begin with a solid, happy family and the perspective, as the film ventures further into abandoned terror, sort of wanes and becomes all-seeing (or simply muddled), with other characters intruding our 'story' and the family becoming immersed in hopelessness and wider social despair. The two final shots, in stark contrast to one another, one of a boy being comforted at night by a fire, and then a 'static' shot from a train moving through the green countryside to wherever, are brilliant.
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