Michael Haneke's Benny's Video is a film with a lot to say. It's a commentary on the media, desensitizing youth, and the parental structure. That's quite a lot to swallow in one movie but Haneke attempts it with a raw experience of violence and absurdity. No main character in this film really acts in any way that can be construed of as normal. The film is about a young boy named Benny who has an obsession with videos and violence. From the first shot it's obvious that this boy isn't wrapped to tight. He watches a video that he shot of a pig being slaughtered with a bolt pistol. He rewinds the tape and watches it again in slow motion with fascination. Benny throughout the film continues to watch this video along with news clips of war and violent movies. He video tapes almost everything and even uses the camera to look out the window of his room. This symbolizes how Benny views the world through a camera and the television. He is not in touch with reality and Haneke makes that very evident. The film progresses as Benny meets a young girl at the video store and takes her to his home while his parents are away. He's not trying to get lucky however. Instead Benny takes this as an opportunity to use the bolt pistol that he stole after he filmed the pig slaughter to kill the young girl. This is a long brutal scene that is viewed almost entirely through Benny's video camera. Even though all the violence is off screen it's hard to watch. This is the strongest sequence in the film. It's in fact the only part of the movie where a character is empathetic. That's the young girl by the way not Benny. Benny continues his weekend by going to a club with friends, taking in a movie and getting a new buzz cut. Oh and then he cleans up the dead body in his bedroom. When his parents return he shows them the video of the murder and than a very long and unemotional conversation ensues between the parents deciding what to do with Benny and the corpse. They decide the best course of action is for his mother to take Benny on a vacation to Egypt while his father Georg stays at home and chops up the body to cover it up. Sounds like a plan. Everything seems fine when Benny and his mom return. Georg asks Benny why he did it and then things go back to the good old days back before the family included a homicidal teenager. The film than concludes with Benny at the police station assumedly turning in his parents for the murder. What a special young boy Benny is. This film tries to comment on dehumanization and the effects of the media. It is unrelenting in addressing these issues, maybe a little too much. When Benny's parents find out that he just killed a young girl they are not as much concerned with why there son is so screwed up but how they are going to clean up the mess he has caused. He is taken on vacation and never once reprimanded for the little crime he committed. They never address to him what happened or even take away his camera and television. Kids get in more trouble for not taking out the garbage. They choose to cover for him and he ultimately betrays them with the same amount of remorse he had when he murdered a young girl. These characters are flat and unrelateable. That's Haneke's style. Just like in "Funny Games" he is not concerned with connecting with the audience but with insulting the conventions of modern media and he does that well.
Review of Benny's Video
