This week’s selections are my two favorite examples of meta-filmmaking or as I like to refer to it: breaking the fourth wall. To explain, breaking the fourth wall is a term that basically means that the film is being aware and making reference to the fact that it is a film. When Ferris Bueller turns to the camera to give us his bulleted list on how to fake out his parents is one example. The fourth wall is actually more of a stage term as it physically is the invisible (non-existent) fourth wall between the set and the audience.
The first film this week “Funny Games” (1997) is written and directed by Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke. In this film, two young assailants mentally and physically torture a vacationing family they have taken hostage by making them play sadistic ‘games.’ This is not what makes this film meta however. The two hostage takers are actually, in a way, surrogates for the filmmaker. They not only drive the story, they seem to have the uncanny ability to manipulate the entire plot. Some films wink at you, this one spits in your face.
Our next film, “Adaptation” (2002) is, among other things, more evidence that Charlie Kaufman is the most talented and original screenwriter working today. Let’s see if I can sum this one up. Essentially, this is a movie about a screenwriter (Charlie Kaufman) writing a screenplay (Adaptation.) Of course, he’s supposed to be writing an adaptation of a Susan Orlean’s bestselling book “The Orchid Thief.” At one point in the film, Kaufman, (Nicholas Cage) in a fit of writer’s block turns to his twin brother (also Cage) and admits: “I've written myself into my screenplay.”
Enjoy.
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