The idea that the whole film was some premeditated act on Benny's part to frame is parents and remove them from his life is, to me, absolutely silly. It reduces the film to a fairly vacuous mystery thriller, which it is not. Haneke's film is a Bressonian reflection on societal malfunction and bourgeois alienation. There are far too many signs that point in the opposite direction of the theory that this was all some mastermind framing of his own parents. For instance, before Benny uses the weapon against the girl, he gives it to her and turns it on himself, giving her an opportunity to kill him. You could argue that he knew she wasn't going to pull the trigger, but that's quite a gamble to take, as is the assumption that your parents won't turn you in when they find out what you've done. Furthermore, the way the murder plays out completely undermines any notion of a premeditated act. After he uses the weapon on her, he first tries to help her, and then when she won't stop screaming, he becomes overwhelmed by fear and anxiety and is driven to put her out of her misery, to finish the job. There was nothing about it that suggested he wanted to kill her from the outset. And if he wanted to ensure that his parents didn't turn him in, there's a whole lot more things he could have done to make the murder look like an accident. It was all far too organic to be manufactured. Of course, if you want to strain yourself enough, you can find a reason to justify any theory. But anyone with any knowledge of Haneke's fundamental themes and motifs wouldn't even consider this theory. It would completely destroy the entire thematic core of the film, and reduce it to a superficial genre film. The idea that even Benny himself doesn't really know why he did what he did is central to the film. Push that aside for some cock-eyed theory of a framing scheme, and you're left with a pretty worthless movie. Nothing in the film points to that theory. That's the result of too much Hollywood cinema, teaching viewers to think in those terms. That's not Haneke's modus operandi, at all. Haneke's films go far beyond that kind of shallow puzzle-solving. One thing all of his films have in common is a refusal to offer the viewer resolution. The power and the intelligence of his films comes from that refusal. By not piecing things together for us and giving us all the answers we want, we are forced to come to grips with the lingering issues presented by the film. He wants us not to know why Benny did what he did, because Benny himself doesn't even seem to know. That's where the film's potency derives from. To come up with some far-fetched theory about the protagonist framing his parents is an attempt to find resolution in a narrative that was clearly not meant to have any.
reply
share
eolloe
9 years ago
To me, Benny seemed a teen experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia (or some other serious mental disorder). He didn't seem to understand the implications of his actions, nor did he seem to be capable of experiencing empathy for others.
That said, after viewing those last 5 minutes, I did wonder about his having asked his mother to leave the door to his room open and the door to the living room open. That seemed odd, particularly since his father's comments at the beginning of the film about the need for some fresh air to be able to get into the room suggested that Benny tended to keep his door closed all the time. Did Benny record his parents' whispered conversation intending to subsequently use that recording against them? Or had it just been his habit to leave the recorder on all the time anyway, and he only decided to turn the recording over to the police after he and his mother had returned from their trip?
My sense has been that he did not originally plan to confess the murder or to turn his parents in; he only decided to do so after they had returned from the trip. I think he recorded his parents because their reaction to what had been revealed about the murder was something he felt needed to be made real by his recording it, which is why he asked his mother to leave the doors open. Note that while he and his mother were in Egypt, he mentioned in a recording that there had been no mention in the papers of the murder, and he seemed perhaps somewhat disappointed by that.
I thought he was turning himself in, out of a belated sense of remorse. (Maybe his grip on reality and lack of empathy were not complete, at least not yet at that point.)
But maybe he did turn his parents in, pin the murder on them, "to see what it would be like." I'm not sure.
reply
share