Saturday 5 October 2024

the piano teacher (w&d haneke, w. elfriede jelinek)

The Piano Teacher was scheduled by Mariana Enriquez as a part of a ciclo she curated, very little of which I am able to watch, due to rehearsals for Birdland. Nevertheless, I caught Huppert and her funny games. The film was more savage than I remembered. It might be one of the most extreme films ever made. Sexual violence, self-mutilation, and the closest Haneke perhaps gets to really letting the handbrake off. For all his cold art, The Piano Teacher feels furiously visceral. In all the wrong ways. By which one means - in all the ways that truly disturb. Unlike, say, Titane, which for all its extremism is nevertheless kind of alluring. Haneke is the high priest of deconstructing western materialism. His uncompromising vision, allied with where Huppert is willing to go as an actress, backed up by Jelinek’s source text, makes for something that seems designed to get its audience to walk out. Or stagger out, bloodied and beaten like the film’s titular protagonist. 

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