Michael Haneke (born 23 March 1942 in Munich, Germany) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter.
He is best known for films such as Funny Games (1997), Caché (2005), The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012). His works often examines social issues, and depict the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society.
Michael Haneke's filmography includes:
- The Seventh Continent (1989)
- Benny's Video (1992)
- 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)
- Funny Games (1997, remade 2007)
- Code Unknown (2000)
- The Piano Teacher (2001)
- Time of the Wolf (2003)
- Caché (2005)
- The White Ribbon (2009)
- Amour (2012)
- Happy End (2017)
Tropes associated with Haneke's films:
- Creator Thumbprint:
- Many of his protagonists are a married couple named Georges and Ann.
- The surname Laurent appears in all his French-speaking works.
- Death of a Child: In Haneke's films, children are just as likely to die as adults.
- Euroshlock: Several of his films fall here.
- Funny Games features violent youth hurting people for fun.
- The Piano Teacher is about sexual violence.
- Downer Ending: When his films actually have closure, it's usually not happy.
- Fade to Black: Scenes often cut uprightly to black before moving on the next scene.
- Le Film Artistique: Several of Haneke's films are made to make a point rather than to be enjoyable or entertaining.
- Leave the Camera Running: Haneke often employs extremely long static takes, as seen in Benny's Video, Code Unknown, Caché, and Amour.
- Left the Background Music On: Often the music provided in-universe is only realized as such after a character stops a record or turns a channel.
- No Ending: His plots often lack closure.
- Realism: His works are often described as this since they often feature unremarkable scenes of everyday life and lack non-diegetic sound.
- Reality Has No Soundtrack: His films usually don't feature a score.
- Silent Credits: Silent opening and closing credits are one of Haneke's trademarks.
- Slice of Life: His films feature lots of shots of characters doing mundane activities to emphasize the emptiness and loneliness that they are going through.
- Violence Is Disturbing: Predominantly violence against animals as demonstrated by the death of the family dog in Funny Games, the butchery of a squealing pig in Benny's Video and a chicken in Caché, the culling of a bunch of cattle in Code Unknown, and squickiest of all, the horses that have their throats slit in Time of the Wolf.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The father in The Seventh Continent as well as the female protagonists in Funny Games and The Piano Teacher vomit on screen.
