Customer Reviews

Benny's Video

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Benny's Video is a unique early work by Michael Haneke. The star of the film is a young Arno Frisch...the same boy who coincidentally went on to play the lead role in his later work 'Funny Games.' Arno plays Benny, the 14 yr old apathetic child of 2 seemingly successful well off parents.

Benny has an obsession/fascination with videos and violence. He likes to visit the local video store. One day while browsing through some videos he spots a girl standing outside the store and ends up approaching her. He takes her home to show her his 'video' and then things get out of control.

Soon the parents end up accidentally discovering the extent of what happened on that video. They become conflicted. They weigh the options, discuss things and soon they come up with a plan... Seeing the parents deliberate over this decision about what to do with Benny and the victim was distressing. The question is.. What would you do if your son did what Benny did?...The realization and the twist at the end is scary. You find out what Benny is all about and what this kid is capable of even with his own flesh and blood and it's not what you think. This movie also shows the lengths parents may go to protect their child.. good or bad.

Also this movie seems to have had another meaning to it such as media having an impact on people's lives. Television, isolation and how violent images may effect someone. I think it was much more than that. The parents, desensitization, emotional emptyness, Benny himself and more. Also a point such as being aliented from the real world can possibly make one numb to it..

As far as violence or disturbing images I can't say I was overly shocked or suprised as to what happened in this movie because I already know Haneke's style. Also this was more about the 'story' than portraying blatant violence. Haneke can stir you with the images, the dialogue and the acting. I dont think any of his main characters have much of a conscience and when you add no conscience and realistic material you get something that has a deep impact on the mind and makes the audience think. It also leaves you with an empty feeling because with these films there are no happy endings and Haneke likes it that way. I recommend this film to people who like his other work.

If one thing can be said about the films of Michael Haneke, it is that they are daring. BENNY'S VIDEO follows a disenchanted youth as he obsesses over violent films, engages in delinquent activities at school, and surveys the neighborhood through the lens of his camera. After he welcomes a young girl in to his voyeuristic world and shows her his prize possession--a video of a pig being shot to death--he turns the gun on her and murders her in cold blood, all while he films the entire event. His parents uncover the tape, and must decide what to do with their sociopathic son. Arno Frisch is captivating as the lead, perfectly depicting an adolescent devoid of all emotion and moral obligation that has been desensitized by the world around him. As is the case in each of Haneke's other offerings, BENNY'S VIDEO is artfully shot, with a cold and detached filming style that is reflective of his characters. He does not invite the viewer to empathize with any of the characters or their actions. He also robs the viewer of any score, thereby removing the safety net that separates fact from fiction (an underlying theme that is replayed constantly in the film).

Outside of the jarring murder, the most frightening aspect of the film is Benny's parents' readiness to cover up their son's mistakes in order to wash their own hands clean of their lack of responsibility and neglect. As usual, Haneke points the finger at his audience, making bold statements about the environmental effects that shape emotionless killers. His condemnation of media violence and parental control cannot be viewed without considering the hypocritical nature of his claims when the film, itself, relies on shocking violence to prove its own point. This same duality would be extended in his later (and superior) effort FUNNY GAMES. Unfortunately, the raw power and heightened suspense created in the first half drop off dramatically after the hour mark, at which point the family drama sets in.

BENNY'S VIDEO is a disturbing look at teen violence that cannot be overlooked. It is gut-wrenching at times, angering at others, but absolutely sure to draw an emotional response from the viewer.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

BENNY'S VIDEO may be the key to what attitude, exactly, Michael Haneke is trying to elicit about voyeurism, a theme that often crops up his work. I think it is fair to say that all of Haneke's films are more about the audience watching them than about the story being watched. Here, we see to what degree a life can be mediated by lenses, viewfinders and monitors.

BENNY'S VIDEO is the story of a teenage boy whose sense of reality is so buffered by visual media that the act of killing someone ("to see what it's like, probably") functions to fill a void caused by seeing life only through lighted frames.

Benny, as played by Arno Frisch (who, five years later, would play one of the preppy young psychopaths of FUNNY GAMES), can't even be said clearly to be a disturbed young man. That's what is so unsettling about the movie: after bringing a young girl to his room and videotaping her, the video image of his crotch clearly shows that he had probably brought her there for the usual things unsupervised teenagers do. Events could just as easily have gone in that direction. But, tellingly, the girl is also so numbed by television that the killing is just as much her idea as it is Benny's. They both crave something real. Benny produces a butcher's gun, a sort of prod that fires .22 caliber bullets at close range; he boasts about stealing it and says that all the farmer had to say about its theft was that his family was lucky they didn't come a week later or they would have gone home without any ham. The prod is passed; dares and taunts go back and forth . . . and then something very real does happen.

I once saw Bob Keeshan ("Captain Kangaroo") interviewed by Johnny Carson, when he recounted an experience from his childhood in the 1930's. A man had been murdered in upstate New York, and even though Keeshan was many miles from the incident, he said he lay awake at night for many weeks just trying to grasp how one person could take the life of another person.

That perspective of killing was shocking to me as I heard it, because it made me realize just how much I take murder in stride, as part of the endless stream of infotainment with which I am bombarded on a daily basis. Michael Haneke's work leaves me craving something better to take the place of that indifference. I have a sense that his films leave me a better person than they found me.

If you liked Haneke's recently acclaimed CACHE, I suggest you go back and watch his earlier masterpiece, BENNY'S VIDEO, that came out way back in 1992 and explores many of the same themes that CACHE tackled - and to even more ominous effect. Influenced by McNaughton's HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (I think, at least), BENNY'S VIDEO is not a commercial proposition by any means - would most people flock to the multiplex to witness a bleak, dark tale of a detached teen boy obsessed with a video of a pig slaughter driven to commit his own heinous act of murder? Tentpole release...NOT! At any rate, BENNY'S VIDEO features all of Haneke's ongoing obsessions with videotaping, voyeurism, the act of LOOKING (and being LOOKED AT) as its own narrative device, sudden shocking violence, and an overall icily detached style that makes the film even more ominous as it reaches its inevitable climax, if you can call it that. I never was able to catch this in the theater, but it's def worth a rent on DVD. Sidenote: also worth a look in the Haneke's body of work is FUNNY GAMES - that ain't so funny either!

A teenage boy made a video of a pig being slaughtered when his parents visited a farm. He also stole the gunlike instrument used in the process. With parents away for the weekend, the boy invites a lonely teenage girl he met at a video store to his apartment, where he kills her. We get little insight as to why - however his extremely cold & distant father and TV clips of the war in Bosnia link this boy's deficient emotional state to the human condition. Despite an unpalatable premise, the film moves masterfully through to a strong conclusion.

Benny's Video is the second film of Austrian director Haneke's "emotional glaciation trilogy" which begins with The Seventh Continent (see my review) and ends with 71 fragments of a chronology of chance. All three are included in The Films of Michael Haneke box set, which I highly recommend.
Haneke is a director who is determined to involve the viewer in the interpretation of his films. He presents us with images, often disturbing, and asks us to interpret them and in the process create our own film. Fortunately each of these three films include an interview with Haneke so that we are able to find what his intentions are with each film.

Benny's Video is about a 14 year old boy who meets a girl at a video store and invites her to his home to watch a video he made of the killing of a pig. They look at the weapon and watch the video. Then he kills the girl with the same weapon and makes a videotape of the murder.

You are the mother or father. What actions would you take when you find the videotape and the dead body in your house?

Watching `Benny's Video' I almost find myself desensitized. It is a rare feat to get me to feel absolutely cold emotionally. I remember when I saw `Elephant' for the first time, and I felt so distant and separate from the madness ensuing on the screen. It was so horrible, so atrocious and yet I didn't care. It didn't bother me. I get a similar feeling when watching `Benny's Video'. Watching Benny commit a heinous crime with a seemingly callous attitude is at one moment infuriating and at the other strangely acceptable. His actions, while completely contradictory to what I would have expected, are so genuine they seem almost appropriate. I know that that sounds just plain ridiculous, especially to anyone who has seen the film, but `Benny's Video' has been the center of many debates between my fellow cinephiles and I, and for precisely this very reason.

As the film ends we are all left wondering WHY?

`Benny's Video' tells the story if a fourteen year-old boy named Benny who becomes obsessed with a home video of a pig slaughter that he shot while he was at a farm with his parents. He watches the video over and over and even rewinds and watches in slow motion. Then, quite suddenly, he invites a young girl he's never met to his home while his parents are away for the weekend where he shows her the video, then shows her the device used for killing the pig (which he stole from the farm) and then proceeds to kill her, all the while filming the act.

What happens next is up for serious debate.

As Benny attempts to clean up the body we see this coldness come over him. He talks to his friend on the phone, goes out dancing, spends the night at his friends home, goes to school, gets a hair cut; anything but show any sign of emotional distress until he simply plays the home video he made of the slaying for his parents. It is in this moment that the film takes a sudden shift. I don't want to get into too much of the film, for it is in the unveiling of the third act that most of the true debate can be spawned, but I do want to express the moral complexities I think this film explores. When you look at the act which Benny commits, it's hard to justify (well, there is no justification) a reason why. In fact, its hard to find one, and I think that is what makes this film so brilliant. It is easy to lash out at the parents or Benny's sick fascination with violence portrayed on film, but I think it's far deeper than that. I'm constantly brought to a scene where, after Benny shaves his head, his father confronts him about his rebellious attitude and simply states that Benny can't say they don't love him and can't blame it on them. I'm glad that Haneke had this put in the film because it makes it harder on the audience. Now we have to find another outlet. And just when we think we are looking in the right direction, Benny's father comes up with a `plan' to hide his son's crime that totally changes the game for us.

There is that coldness again.

And then the ending, which I found to be a complete shock and totally masterful (unforgettable), is something I am still trying to contemplate.

Haneke is known for his approach to violence and voyeurism and the human psyche; how this all plays into who we are as individuals, and while `Benny's Video' is one of his earliest films (his sophomore feature film), it is (for me) one of his strongest. A friend of mine felt that Haneke raised a lot of good points and observations here, but that he didn't complete them, but for me Haneke never completes his ideas and that is why I love him so much. He presents to the audience something brutal and forces us to complete the process on our own, making the film all the more haunting.

Oh, and lastly I just want to give a standing ovation to Angela Winkler's teeth chattering scene; truly devastatingly real (or was it?).

Austrian director Michael Haneke is adept at puncturing your mind, challenging your power of judgement, and then lingering deep in your memory. He directed this five years before the masterpiece Funny Games, and this is no less gripping of a tale.
Benny is a young teen whose obsession with violent films spills over into real life. The dilemma he ensnares his family in is quite disturbing. I love how Haneke defies many standard methods of storytelling, much of the violence occurs just off screen.
If you liked Funny Games, give this a look. There is not much humor here, the tone is dark, edgy, and desperate. Haneke is brilliant at pacing and sustaining momentum. 4.5 stars

Young Benny enjoys renting movies and amateur video recording alone, while his parents remain totally unaware of his voyeuritic interests. Benny's interests for visceral media grows bent into a caustic reality against friendship. He meets a young girl outside a video store that accompanies him home. She learns the hard way not to trust anyone you meet so strangely and like the pig in the video she falls into the hands of death. That speaks for many of these stalkers and psychopaths out there today, so be careful.

Benny at least has some nerve to confess murder to his parents. Way to go boy, but who is going to get rid of the body? The last half of the movie is all about the parents acting out a plan to conceal the body away from the public. I suspect it has to do with money more than protection. That's my take, since no one in the family discussed it personally with Benny.

Why is this film worth 5 stars? Any film that can raise new ideas about something is worth 5 stars to me. This film distanced me away from the horror and towards the end I got closer to a message that was difficult to grasp at first. At the beginning you were really in the dark with this boy Benny, towards the middle you get a little closer to reality when you are in Egypt and at the end you come to a final close of truth. I suppose this is one way you can look at interpreting this film, but eventually you will come to share the director's opinion; that parents and media are partly responsible for abnormality in society.

Header says it: fails on two levels: not only as a horror flick, but as an intellectual take on why humans
have this urge/need/desire/propensity to murder for (apparently) no reason at all.

Could the answer (simply) be "boredom?" About the only character (the young killer's mother) who comes alive (if briefly) is when she takes her son to Egypt--in order to get away from some nasty bit of business
that the kid committed back in Europe and sobs for a while, guilt having gotten to her after all (for having attempted, along with her husband, to cover up their dull little punk's dirty deed.)

By the way, don't be fooled. This can't, CAN'T touch the original Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a true horror classic.