Not long after arriving there, a young man named Peter (Frank Giering) knocks on the door, asking for four eggs to do some baking.
Anna gives him the eggs somewhat reluctantly, but unfortunately, he drops them just as he is leaving, and asks for four more.
Again, Anna agrees (becoming more frustrated this time around, of course), but when the family dog (an Alsatian) jumps up and startles Peter, he drops these eggs too.
Anna starts to suspect something is up. Another young man, Paul (Arno Frisch) arrives, insisting that they need the eggs.
Georg tries to get the young men to leave, at Anna’s insistence and growing frustration, but the young men refuse to leave, instead subjecting the entire family to a night of torture and humiliation, resulting in some absolutely horrific events.
This film is deeply disturbing, and not just because of the intense violence (none of which is shown on screen, but rather implied throughout). It is disturbing because of the way this film makes the audience think, and how it makes them feel.
Director Michael Haneke (who also wrote the screenplay), in making this film, set out to present a treatise on the very notion of violence in film, and in particular, the complicit nature of the audience in film violence. Suggesting that audiences actually perpetuate the horrific events they watch on screen in paying to watch such films, he has created a true work of art. This film definitely achieves all it sets out to do.
Haneke breaks every single filmic convention in this film, too, even the conventions you may not have realized were conventions before watching it. There are long, static shots with very little action or movement. There are many moments when the character speaking is not shown on screen for long periods. And most significantly and noticeably, there are several points where the fourth wall is completely torn down, with characters directly addressing the audience, again drawing them in and making clear their complicity in the violence that is being depicted.
The performances of the entire cast are incredible, with particular attention to Mühe and Lothar. The two young men give particularly chilling portrayals of their characters, delivering their lines with almost no emotion quite often.
As an interesting side note, Haneke remade this film shot-for-shot for an American audience ten years later in 2007, with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth in the lead roles. The reason he made it a shot-for-shot remake was that he felt he had nothing new to add, his views on violence in film were the same, and the need for it to be addressed in this way also the same. Were I to review that remake, my comments would of course be the same, except for any remarks on the performances of the cast (though the cast in the remake give just as great performances as those in the original). And of course, the remake is in English, as opposed to German, as this original version is.
Summing up, Michael Haneke has created a remarkable piece of cinematic art, a film that still stands today as one of the most unsettling films I have ever seen. Everything he set out to say with this film I believe he has said, and in agreement with him, I must say that the remade version shows us that nothing has really changed in that time.
Being unable to fault this film, or find in it any flaws, I have no choice but to award it 10 out of 10.
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