The Seventh Continent and Benny's Video

Movie Analysis: The Seventh Continent and Benny`s Video
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Movie Analysis
The seventh Continent and Benny`s video are both from the Glaciation Trilogy directed by Haneke. The films revolve around "emotional glaciation" affecting the families and eventually lead to their demise. Haneke chooses an extraordinary way to direct both the films whereby the main the main idea of the film is confiscated behind the normal family routines depicted in the films. The characters Haneke Brings out in both ‘The seventh Continent` and ‘Benny`s video` are not easily understood. At first though, they are just about ordinary people living. For instance Benny is a boy with nothing out of the norm about him. However, through these characters Haneke strives to bring into focus themes and ideologies about life and even about Australia. This includes sweeping sensitive matters under the carpet by Austrians, emotional disconnection, violence and super-modernity with the case of seventh continent.
The seventh continent is Haneke`s first works to feature in the theatre. It is based on a true story and portrays disunity and disintegration in families. According to Haneke this film illustrates the continuous emotional glaciation in Austria. . Set in unknown Austrian town, the story is about a family of three that commits suicide in an attempt to evade the daily drudgery that has been monotonous in their lives. Just like other films forming part of the trilogy, the film investigates modern life emotional glaciation. The auteur demonstrates themes of self alienation and dehumanization through the lives of this family. An acute sense of claustrophobia is created just as the film starts with the car wash scene which forms the temper for the entire movie. The modern society is placed at a state of disillusion painted by the film whereby the whole day of this family can be summarized using a couple of hand motions; This starts with a toothbrush in the morning and ends at the dinner table with a knife (Grundmann 2010, 30). The seventh continent addresses themes which include breakdown in the society and violence. These theme are connected to other movies in the trilogy for instance Benny`s video.
Benny`s video is part of the glacial trilogy by Haneke. Again Haneke presents this film using similar methods to the seventh continent. In this film various themes are brought out. This includes parental responsibility, guilt, emotional disconnection in families, role of the media and violence. Haneke in this film focuses on the aftermath of real-life sociological issues based on the life of Benny. Benny is shown as an ordinary boy with the zeal of watching violent movies which seem to have devastating outcomes to his life. This is illustrated where he invites a girl to his home and kills her with no motive or emotion. When later asked why he did it by his father he simple answers,` to know what it`s like…`.Guilt is a strong theme in this film. This evidenced where Benny`s father thinks that if they report what their son had done it will harm their reputation. In addition, Benny`s mother is seen crying over the guilt of her son`s actions when they were on a vacation to Egypt. Violence takes a center stage in this film and seems to reiterate from the seventh continent.
The glacial trilogy is all connected to one another thematically. Even though Haneke doesn`t really try to explain the cause or reason for the characters behavior in some of the films, one can see a resemblance in the themes built in the films. Haneke`s fi...