Rating:
by Derek Smith 6/18/06

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SPOILER WARNING: Important events occurring in the third act will be mentioned in this review.  In this case, I don't feel that knowing the outcome beforehand would, in any way, effect how one views the film, but if you'd rather not know, please do not read until after seeing it.

Michael Haneke's debut film The Seventh Continent, the first of his "emotional glaciation" trilogy,  is a stunning examination of the effects of emotional isolation and the inability to communicate in the modern age.  Here Haneke focuses on the family unit, using a true story he read in a newspaper about a families group suicide as the springboard for his structuralist study of modernity.  The opening shot of the man and his wife sitting still and silent in their car as it passes through an automated car wash is one of the film's many recurring images of cleansing and routine.  For the first 10 minutes or so, we see no character's face straight-on as they are either obscured or framed to show only arms and torsos.  The effect of this technique, reminiscent of Robert Bresson (one of Haneke's major influences), is disorienting at first, but is extremely effective at presenting the characters as the sum total of their routines and interactions with technology.  It's a cold and clinical approach that strips the characters of all individuality outside of their actions and while this doesn't present "the whole story", the film's first act manages to inform us about the process of dehumanization that eventually leads to the horrific finale without explicitly trying to explain it.

The Bressonian style is incredibly effective in forming abstractions in the domestic space, where freedom to roam or congregate with the family is eliminated and people are confined to areas where they perform their daily tasks.  Haneke isolates these instances of repetition throughout, both in the home and in the couple's respective workplaces, in order to stress their tyranny not in one instance, but of the pattern over the course of time.  The framing of segmented bodies suggests a constant detachment while performing these actions - everything from feeding fish to making coffee and eating dinner takes on a similar quality to the automated car wash.  Existence for this family consists of numerous involuntary, yet seemingly necessary actions, that despite their efforts to reform and escape after their daughter pretending to be blind at school brings about an unwelcome fit of self-reflectivity, they find destruction to be their only logical route.  Just as their inability to cope with modern living is expressed by the cumulative dehumanization of senseless repetition and routine, their demise occurs in the same frighteningly methodical way.  It is here, in the final act, that it becomes truly sickening that the events are based on an actual occurrence.  The husband quits his job and after removing all of their money from the bank, they begin destroying everything they own.  The destruction of possessions is clearly a catharsis for the family - less so for the daughter who seems to perform her tasks as an automaton out of pure duty to obey her parents, until she lets out one final shriek when she finds her fish flopping helplessly on the floor - but also a form of rebellion against the restrictions of their bourgeois life.  Haneke has said that the image of all their cash being flushed down the toilet was one of the parts which most disturbed audiences upon it's release and it still remains potent today.  Such an action can only be seen as a blatant attack on the moral bankruptcy (no pun intended) of the capitalist system and more than food, water and air, money is the crucial element of survival in the modern world.  By highlighting the horror of seeing the family destroy their home and possessions, the value society places on material things is stressed to the point that these actions are nearly as disturbing as the suicides themselves.  The objective approach to the story helps to avoid any preachiness, yet the cumulative effect of the film, especially the gut-wrenching final act, is one that is nothing short of frightening.