Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic Of The Image

by Catherine Wheatley

Existing critical traditions fail to fully account for the impact of Austrian director, and 2009 Cannes Palm d'Or winner, Michael Haneke’s films, situated as they are between intellectual projects and popular entertainments. In this first English-language introduction to, and critical analysis of, his work, each of Haneke’s eight feature films are considered in detail. Particular attention is given to what the author terms Michael Haneke’s ‘ethical cinema’ and the unique impact of these films upon their audiences. Drawing on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Stanley Cavell, Catherine Wheatley, introduces a new way of marrying film and moral philosophy, which explicitly examines the ethics of the film viewing experience. Haneke’s films offer the viewer great freedom whilst simultaneously imposing a considerable burden of responsibility. How Haneke achieves this break with more conventional spectatorship models, and what its far-reaching implications are for film theory in general, constitute the principal subject of this book.

Genres: Film

234 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Axolotl]

This is an well-wrought and nuanced look at Haneke's work. Wheatley makes such a persuasive argument regarding Haneke's "cinematic program" and when she isn't clearly showing us the flaws in most of the criticism of her subject, she is relegating them to the dustbin (very politely, mind you). It is enough to say that you will never look at Haneke's films (and perhaps those of any other filmmaker, for that matter) in the same way again.

Perhaps "Mature Audiences Only" should be printed on the cover (though certainly not for the reason you might, at first, think)!

[AJ Webb]

I definitely do not have the necessary foreknowledge to understand everything in this book, but I still learned a lot about Haneke’s films and the philosophy behind them.