Fundamental Flaw?

The automobile accident they saw was a kind of trigger for them to reach that decision. Also, I think you answered your own question: "I don't see the anguish..." One of the ideas in the movie is that the anguish is there. To us, looking from the outside, there is no way we could ever know what is truly happening. Most likely we will never get to know the root cause of why everyone does what they do - mainly because we all live like automatons tending to our daily tasks. We fail to stop and think and communicate. The moment of the accident was when the family stopped and thought and communicated for the first time in years.


Do The Mussolini! Headkick!

[deleted]

While witnessing the car accident surely was a breaking point (as she broke down in the car wash after, as if they needed to cleanse themselves from that first human breakthrough), I think it would be fun to remain ambiguous as to exactly when and why they decide to commit suicide.
Say that after the sccident they decide to destroy all their ties with banal consumer carrerist life, in hopes of discovering some new vitality. but it doesnt work, they destroy their house with the same mechanical and routine attitude with which they grocery shop/have sex/say goodnight to their kids/etc.
So maybe the suicide was the last resort after the clothes, the furniture, the money and everything else.
Haneke wanted to make a movie without concrete explanations, and this is one of its strengths. As pognant and intellectually stimulating as it was, it still got me on an edge of my seat excitement way because no matter how much they descended away from 'normalicy', I still didnt see the suicide coming.
Thank god nobody spoiled the ending for me before i watched it.

I just watched La Pianiste and then ran out ot get this, any suggestions for a 3rd Haneke film, I am hooked!

The reasons for people committing suicide are often elusive, and especially so when a family does so. A point that I havent seen brought up is that they, or at least the mother, suffer from depression. The mother gets anti-depressants from her doctor (that is my interpretation at least), and her brother has even been hospitalized for depression following the death of his mother. What brought this on is hard to say, but the suicide rates for depressives are certainly very high, medication or not. It is likely, I think, that the parents suffer without knowing why they suffer, so they see life as hopeless and empty - which explains to some degree why they they killed their daughter.

"However one thing that bothers me about is the actual motivation for the ending (not revealing spoilers here). If the family really is as cold, as bleak, as empty as they are - would they not instead CONTINUE to live this way? Simply put, an robot or automaton - which is what these people are like - would not generally choose to cease to exist. I don't see the anguish that prompts them to make this gruesome decision."

My take was that they realized they were living this way where as most people do not. It was this realization that lead them to the decisions they made. They rejected this way of living.

Not everyone wears anguish on their sleeve. We all have our inner demons and carry on as if everything's ok, in automatic pilot. In fact it's rare that people show their true feelings about their existence. This film is brilliant for that very reason

As others have suggested suicides often generate more questions than answers. The form of the film (in three separate chapters, months apart) doesn't help provide coherent reasons or answers, deliberately so.

I don't think the family were cold or bleak or empty. As inidividuals they show concern for one another and a range of feelings are shown some in small ways.

I'm a fountain of blood
In the shape of a girl

Not sure who is more to blame, Haneke or the actors, but these two never conveyed a sense they`d ever been any different and neither did there appear to have much anguish or desperation hidden under the surface, beyond a few solitary flashes like the somewhat goofy crying episode - so indeed their radical action in the end didn`t ring quite right.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan