LEMMINGS, PART 1 - ARCADIA (AUSTRIA/1979/MICHAEL HANEKE)

Shot in two parts, this early Michael Haneke film follows a group of teenagers living in a small Austrian town in the fifties. After a startling opening shot of a car being vandalised, the film begins with something of a montage, presenting the film’s characters as they do their best to live up to their parents’ bourgeois ideals. As the film continues, cracks start showing in the kids’ polite façade – cigarettes are smoked in private, couples are having pre-marital sex, friends turn on each other – and any attempt of intervention by their parents only widens the generation gap.

A closely autobiographical piece (Haneke grew up in post-WWII Austria), Lemmings, Part 1 is an astute exploration of society’s influence on the developing minds of impressionable teenagers. The film is careful not to present them as reckless monsters – on the surface they appear all manners and sweetness, and their negative behaviour feels like a helpless metamorphosis rather than rebellion. These children’s violent impulses are made all the more terrifying by the fact that they are not yet equipped to understand their motives, meaning that this transformation is beyond their, or anybody’s, control. This theme is adeptly explored in Haneke’s latest film, The White Ribbon, the setting transposed to pre-WWI Germany. One can perhaps recognise this as Haneke’s own anti-war message, the suggestion being that it reinstates people’s class status and breeds conflict in every level of society. An accomplished precursor to Haneke’s later masterpieces, Lemmings, Part 1 could easily be Austrian Graffiti.

THE CASTLE (AUSTRIA/1997/MICHAEL HANEKE)

Mere seconds after entering a bar in a small German village, a land surveyor known only as K (Ulrich Mühe) is met with disproportionate revulsion. His every move is challenged, and some of the villagers inform him that he is not allowed to be there, despite K’s insistence that he had been appointed to work on the local castle. The next morning, K encounters Arthur and Jeremias, two simple men who have been told to serve as his assistants, but who serve to do little more than annoy. During his uncomfortable sojourn in the village, K receives intermittent communication from Klamm, his unseen employer, who sympathises with his confusion but does little to help. Rather than waking up each morning to work, K finds himself wrapped in more red tape each day, and both Klamm and the castle soon seem like figments of his imagination.

It is hard to imagine a modern director more suited to adapt Franz Kafka’s final work than Michael Haneke, who has made a name for himself creating unsettling psychological dramas. As in Kafka’s book, the threat is intangible but palpable throughout, and Haneke keeps a rhythm to the film with abrupt fades to black. The film is however weakened by a narration which detracts from the cinematic illusion. While a difficult character to portray, K does not feel as in conflict with his surroundings as he does in the book, but Haneke does well to represent his frustrations realistically. Not perfect, but an admirable effort.

THE SEVENTH CONTINENT (AUSTRIA/1989/MICHAEL HANEKE)

An affluent middle-class family in Austria goes about their daily duties. Father Georg works as an engineer, while mother Anna is an optician. When their young daughter Eva pretends to be blind at school, the couple begins to realise the suffocating monotony of day-to-day life. Anna, taking particular offence at the news of Eva’s charade, encourages her daughter to tell the truth under the proviso that she wouldn’t cause her any harm, but slaps her as soon as she admits what happened. This cycle of repressed feelings, pessimism and pronounced ennui continues over the course of three days, and a visit to Georg’s parents’ house proves life-changing for the family, as they appear to be fulfilling a plan to emigrate to Australia, the idealised ‘seventh continent’ of the title.

In many ways, The Seventh Continent is a very admirable first feature. Michael Haneke’s infamous awkward long takes are used here in the same way they have been throughout his career, establishing his immediately recognisable style. The same can be said for the film’s deceptive pacing – by the time it has finished, the viewer is left to wonder if they really saw everything they thought they did. More unusually, Haneke manages to keep the audience magnetised through what should be offputtingly dull and inaccessible. A sequence where a cashier frantically types in codes for a deluge of items on the conveyor belt succinctly delineates the family’s disillusionment with life, the aggressive sounds of the receipt printer serving as a death knell.

THE WHITE RIBBON (AUSTRIA/2009/MICHAEL HANEKE)

The White Ribbon concerns the inhabitants of the German village of Eichwald, in the period preceding World War One. The village is clearly led by three patriarchs. The pastor reduces his children to penance-seeking zealots, punishing them for minor transgressions and tying white ribbons of ‘purity’ to them to remind them of their immorality. The doctor subjects both his daughter and housekeeper to sexual humiliation, while maintaining a good rapport with many of the other villagers. The despotic baron and lord of the manor shows no mercy to his workers. Suddenly, the village is beset by a series of dramatic incidents – the doctor is thrown from his horse, the manor barn is set on fire, the pastor’s canary is killed. Through struggling to piece the mystery together, the local schoolteacher soon learns that the pastor’s punishments have not gone without consequence.

Showered with praise upon its release, The White Ribbon is a slow-burning masterwork, the images of which will remain with the viewer for a lifetime. True to form, director Michael Haneke forebodes the real drama with short, disquieting scenes (such as the discussion Anni has with her little brother about the inevitability of death), as well as that most famous of Haneke mainstays, the unpopulated fixed-camera shot. Those who had doubted his film style before may feel the need for re-evaluation here – while it is no less shocking than the rest of his canon, there is a sense of artistic maturity here, the film often echoing Bergman and Reitz.