Michael Haneke’s Films Ranked by Compassion for Humanity

To commemorate the one week long theatrical run of Happy End here in Salt Lake City, I watched five of Haneke’s films from the past 20 years to see if they really are as bleak and pessimistic as his reputation suggests. The films on this list are ordered from least to most sympathetic in how they judge the human condition.

5. Funny Games (1997, 2007)

Famously and exhaustingly nihilistic, Haneke’s outlook towards humanity is at its most pessimistic in 1997’s Funny Games. An extremely well-directed home invasion horror movie, it’s intended to serve as a scathing (if sometimes overpoweringly condescending) critique of the types of violence in media that Haneke believes society is addicted to… and his clear stance that this type of violence should be uncomfortable to watch permeates every scene.

This is possibly Haneke’s most sweeping condemnation against the types of media we consume and the pain humans are drawn to seeing, and he was so confident with this concept that he lovingly remade it ten years later, shot for shot, just to further iterate on the film’s thesis by reaching a wider English-language audience.

For me, the sheer negativity of this outlook is suffocating without the flecks of absurdist humor that line some of Haneke’s later films or any kind of optimistic coda that may soften the film’s negative outlook. Though his efforts to bring Funny Games’ message to a wider audience are interesting, by going for such a wide-scale reproach it loses much of the impact Haneke’s films have when they tackle more focused subjects in ways that don’t blatantly attempt to alienate and disgust.

4. Caché (2005)

Though themes of racism seep into many of his films, Caché is Haneke’s most explicit exploration of the topic. The main character, Georges, is a personification of France’s lack of remorse for the injustices inflicted upon Algerians throughout the Algerian War and the lasting discrimination in the years afterward. The film’s themes extend past this initial parable, though, weaving a tale about a man who refuses to feel remorse or change his behaviors in even the slightest ways despite his actions having visceral ramifications for those around him.

Georges and his wife, Anne, are haunted by anonymous deliveries of videotapes that show footage of some of the events in their lives alongside crude drawings that remind Georges of how, when he was a child, he talked his parents into reversing their decision to adopt an Algerian refugee, Majid. Georges seems uncomfortable with any interruption to the status quo and becomes obsessed with figuring out who is sending the tapes and resolving the matter as quickly as possible. The easiest explanation seems to be that Majid is seeking revenge for the events of their childhoods, so Georges continually harasses Majid until he commits suicide in front of Georges to put the matter to rest.

(An aside: Yes, Georges and Anne are the names Haneke uses for characters in the majority of his films, including all five included on this list. This makes his characters seem less like developed personalities and more like examples a professor is using to explain theories and concepts out of a textbook. This meshes with Haneke’s sometimes heavy-handed themes that are intended to make us reflect on our own lives rather than assume they only apply to distinct characters in each film.)

It’s never made clear who is sending the tapes; it seems more likely that the anonymous sender is some incarnation of Georges’ repressed guilt, or perhaps society’s increasing pressure that we reexamine the ways marginalized people have been treated in the past. Either way, any resolution to that question seems far less important than how the events that follow paint Georges as an incredibly distant and unrelatable character as he seems determined to immediately return to the status quo. In some of the film’s final few scenes, Georges refuses to explain his actions to Anne or, later, to Majid’s son when he confronts Georges in his office, seeming more annoyed than anything else by their unwillingness to immediately move on.

For the most part, Caché paints a picture of humanity that is, for the most part, unremorseful and self-centered, unwilling to reexamine past wrongs and how they still have impacts today. However, the film ends on a more uplifting and surprisingly optimistic note as the final shot that plays under the credits shows Georges’ son and Majid’s son talking and getting along despite (or possibly because of) the film’s racially-charged events, indicating the possibility of a more united future led by a younger generation that isn’t burdened by the same biases as the past.

3. Happy End (2017)

Happy End has been written about as Haneke’s response to those who believed Amour was uncharacteristically compassionate compared to the rest of his filmography, and there’s certainly an element of that here. The subtle ways in which the main characters dehumanize, ignore, and otherwise treat the refugee population of their city as props is especially vile in comparison to the absurdist nature of much of the movie. And there’s a lot to be said here about how psychological problems can run through a family — how vulnerable are we to developing the same problems, paranoias, and self-obsessions as our parents and grandparents?

If feeling love for others is the driving conflict of Amour, Happy End removes that conflict by entirely detaching its characters from the seeming burdens of affection. With very few exceptions, the majority of the film’s displays of emotion seem calculated and performative, utilitarian and unfeeling. A more generous reading of the film is as an exploration of how difficult it is to continue living after losing a loved one, as Jean-Louis Trintignant reprises his role from Amour, largely resigned to trying to find a way to commit suicide years after he has lost his wife. In the film’s most arresting central scene, he bonds with his granddaughter, Eve, over the loss of loved ones and the struggle of finding ways to continue living. The eponymous “happy end” comes in the midst of another one of his suicide attempts, one that Eve is happy to let him carry out, understanding his desires and impulses better than any of his children have ever made an attempt to.

Fortunately, there’s an air of lightheartedness and humor that keeps the film from becoming chokingly negative — scenes where characters seem utterly unaffected by the passing of loved ones are immediately bookended by scenes wherein, for example, a character sings along poorly to Sia’s Chandelier while flinging himself against the walls of a karaoke bar. This is a film that portrays a barely-functioning and uncaring clan of narcissists, but, in a turn strange for Haneke, it doesn’t take itself as seriously as might be fatal when approaching this subject matter.

2. Amour (2012)

Amour is a tremendously uncomfortable love story that uses affection as the primary source for its conflict, a flaw exploited to inflict pain on Georges, a retired pianist, as he experiences the rapid decline of his wife, Anne’s, health in their austere Paris apartment.

The film’s detached directing and cold cinematography are often joked about as the only way Haneke could approach material so deeply vulnerable. But Amour isn’t so different than many of his films — the inevitability of losing our loved ones is a side of the emotional spectrum that we’re uncomfortable with, and Amour is a deep dive into that pain. Haneke finds that polarizing aspect he loves to include in his films in the impossible-to-navigate tradeoff between the highs of being in love and the absolute lows of watching a loved one die. All the discomfort in Amour stems from how we understand and value love and affection, exploring a side of this that is usually only implied. The people you love will die, or you will die before them, and it will be hard.

However, at its core, Amour is a compassionate film. The best argument for its heart comes in one of the film’s final scenes, when Georges follows Anne’s apparition out of their apartment shortly after he decides to end her life. He may never return to the space they shared together, but he will always be chasing his wife and what he felt when he was with her. This is perhaps the most sympathetic coda given to any character on this list, a potent illustration of how the lingering impacts of love can haunt us despite the pain it brings.

Amour is hard to watch not because it’s prodding parts of us we’re ashamed of. It touches on the parts of life that we are the most attached to, the things that are the most important to us… and shows us that they will end. If it clicks for you, this is as soul-crushingly affecting as Haneke’s films can be.

1. Code Unknown (2000)

Code Unknown is broad in its scope and often cryptic in its subject matter. Following an initial scene where they all cross paths for several minutes, the film tracks a handful of characters from different backgrounds through vignettes that vary in length, tone, and content, developing themes that seem less carefully calculated than anything else Haneke has directed.

Of course, it’s not hard to identify some degree of Haneke’s ever-present fascination with how people can lash out and inflict pain on others, but Code Unknown is sympathetic to people on both sides of these conflicts, almost obsessed with exploring the rationale behind how people act. While Funny Games and Caché feature men inflicting emotional and physical harm on others without a clear justification for the aggressor’s actions, Code Unknown provides a fragmented attempt at understanding why people behave the ways they do in any given moment — and how the emotional fallout from an event can echo through our lives.

The film explores a much wider emotional spectrum than Haneke’s other work, leaving us with our own questions that Haneke seems content to leave unanswered — maybe there is no truly satisfying rationale for peoples’ actions. Maybe trying to understand the rationale behind any one specific action a person takes is a futile effort that only raises more questions.

Much like often happens in life, Code Unknown’s characters consistently fail to communicate and understand each other, though their struggles to do so are depicted through a series of realistic and complex long takes that feel far less cold and detached than much of Haneke’s work. The film’s sympathy lies in its understanding of the ambiguity of making choices that impact others and the universal difficulty of communicating to others.

Art doesn’t have to be unabashedly optimistic to be sympathetic to the human condition — life is messy, and Code Unknown reflects that messiness more than any other of Haneke’s films.

Though some of Haneke’s films can be almost unbearably negative and hard to watch, others are surprisingly sympathetic, exploring the complicated emotional spectrum that comes alongside life, relationships, and participating in society.