Even when we do take care of what we need to, media lingers in the background, waiting for us like a hungry barbarian to return to it once again. We read or play games while we eat, before and after we sleep, as we get ready and after we finish often opting for media consumption and distraction over human interaction, unable to do our duties properly or get some peace and quiet and time for any amount of much needed reflection. The issues that Haneke is bringing to the forefront in this film have only been amplified in the last 25+ years since its initial release and sadly, they’ve still yet to be dealt with or even addressed in a meaningful way by society at large. The grim realities we all must come to terms with as a whole.ħ1 Fragments is a microcosm of our world. Haneke knows this and he holds up a mirror to us. We won’t find it abnormal because we’ve seen it all before. Break one down long enough with an endless stream of violent (or really any exorbitant amount of) media, excess, mundanity and monotonous repetition (displayed brilliantly here through an unbelievably lengthy scene where a young man practices ping pong against an autonomous machine that pumps out an endless stream of balls) and they can treat one however they like. Events that seem benign on their own can spark a flame that has been waiting to burn and smolder just under the surface for god knows how long. The unfortunate happenings that often take place before a tragedy only serve as a catalyst for something that has been brewing inside a person for a very long time. Sure, occasionally people just snap, but that isn’t usually the case. Some are good, some are bad, most neutral all culminating in complete catastrophe.ĭamaged and troubled people aren’t broken by one incident. Like a puzzle, all the pieces must fit together in a certain order. Each fragment is important when viewed as a whole, though seemingly inconsequential when isolated. With this film, he explores these concepts by way of 71 different scenes showing various episodes in the lives of many different people living in Vienna. Mass media saturation and desensitization the effect it has on how we interact as humans is what Haneke has always been interested in. He says so much with his minimalistic style and his filmic identity already feels so refined in just his third feature film. Restraint and constraint, Haneke makes perfect use of both here. Touching on virtually every important aspect and theme of his filmography magnificently and concisely. It is, without a doubt, his most comprehensive and indispensable work to date. If I could only pick one of Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s films to show to someone, it’d be 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance.
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