Customer Reviews

71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a work concerned with the social impact of TV, a medium Marshall McLuhan described as "cool," or requiring a lot of investment by the viewer, as compared to cinema. Michael Haneke, though, seems intent on making cinema the "coolest" (in the McLuhanesque sense) medium of all. That is especially evident in this third entry in what he has called his "Glaciation Trilogy," so called because the three films address aspects of "the coldness of the society in which we live." (Haneke)

The movie opens with a title card that gives away the end of the movie. A college student named Max B. is, on December 23, 1993, going to go into a Viennese bank and shoot three people dead, then turn the gun on himself. From there we proceed to the threads of the story, beginning on October 12, 1993.

Basically, there are seven main characters. There is Max, the college student; Marian Radu, an ethnic Romanian boy from Bucharest, has come to Austria because he has heard "people are nice to children" there; Tomek, an elderly man, lives an isolated life even though his daughter also lives in Vienna; Inge and Paul Brunner are a childless couple in the process of adopting a daughter; and Hans and Maria are a married couple at wits end, due to the illness of their infant. Three of these will be dead at the end of the film. Two of them will be at the bank because they are habitually there. So, the "chance" of the title really only refers to one character, at least as regards the shootings.

The "71 Fragments" are isolated from each other by black-outs. About twenty of these segments prominently feature a television or a monitor. Several others feature them as audio elements, or have them playing out of focus in a portion of the screen. Most broadcasts are news programs, taken from real sources, and demonstrate how news stories are fashioned to show the viewer how to feel about world events. "Cool medium," indeed.

Haneke, in an interview found in the "special features," says that he strives to make his films in a way that shows "what is wrong in way that gives you a desire for the alternative." This amounts to almost a manifesto in his body of work, and accounts for the increasingly decentered and sometimes inscrutable quality of his films.

Here is a funny game Mr. Haneke plays with anyone, like me, who decides to count the blackouts. There are only sixty-eight of them. Sixty-eight blackouts, but still "71 Fragments." It is a little mystery a bit like the encounter at the end of CACHÉ, in which two people who aren't supposed to know each other have what appears to be a friendly and familiar conversation--one that is inaudible to us. Fade to black, The End.

Well, for those who care enough to count, I think the three missing fragments are as found as follows: two additional fragments are embedded in the very clever blackout #43, which begins with Radu telling his story on TV. The third missing fragment occurs at blackout #68, and concludes the film. As with everything Haneke does, this mystery will have different theories, but for what it's worth, there is mine.

The Seventh Continent and Benny's Video (see my reviews), the first two films of Haneke's trilogy, take a micro view of two troubled Austrian families. 71 Fragments takes a macro look at Vienna at Christmas with fragments of television newscasts showing a violent world and looks at various Viennese residents coping with the stresses of the holiday season. At the end of the film a young man, unable to handle the stress, takes out a gun and kills a number of people at random.

In his director's filmed comments Michael Haneke explains why he presents the film in fragments. He says that in many violent films we tend to sympathize with the villain because he is presented as a complete and admirable character. He also explains that true art is beautiful not for what it shows but for what it does not show.

The three films are included in the Haneke seven film box set, which I strongly recommend.

This is my favorite of Haneke's early trilogy, even though it's the most subtle and challenging of the group, because it is so humane and compassionate, despite the coldness, pessimism, and threat of violence that haunts the entire film. It reminds me a lot of his later film, Code Unknown. What I took away from this movie is that the world is a cold place full of alienated people who can't or won't make meaningful connections with others. Random violence, rather than being an extraordinary event, is a representation of this condition. The Mikado game has a lot of resonances in this movie. Out of the random fragments of life, you struggle to make the best of your circumstances. Also, people are inextricably interconnected with each other whether they realize it or not and cannot act without influencing others in an infinite chain of contingencies. The game with the shapes is significant also. Even though this film is depressing and pessimistic, it doesn't leave you hopelessly numbed and apathetic like other depressing movies. Instead, it makes you want to try harder in your personal relationships and in your role as citizen in a diverse society.