I wanted to but couldn't!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Haneke destroying the sacred temple of the atomistic family. The values we associate with the family, love, security, trust, it being a shelter against the world, turn in on themselves to destroy it. For the love within family already involves violence, the security already involves egoism and selfishness, its seclusion involves alienation. What happens before (the slap, the carwash, their shopping routines) are not much different than the ending in this respect. The aquarium was a metaphor of the ideal of a happy, secure home, amidst the horrors and chaos of the external world. Its destruction is painful because it is the destruction of the dream, the acknowledgment of reality. The hardcore reality is that, family is no refuge from the horrors and terrors of life (and death), it is an extension of it. In death we are alone.

Seriously, this movie is so boring! *spoiler coming you'll regret you never read*The story of the movie is: couple with a daughter, bored of their meaningless everyday lives decided to suicide but first sells all their assets, flushes their money and destroy their belongings. Thats it!!!! Seriously, thats it, you'll thank me for not letting you see this booooooring 2 hours long movie where nothing happens!!Endless meaningless scenes like brushing teeth, eating cereal. Static scenes also, no camera movement for the entire movie. I begged for something good to happen but no...

Someone else wrote that this film was art, I'm a lot less sure. It uses visual imagery as its main narrative and this is by far it's strongest point, but there are also characters and hints of some kind of plot. Here, things are much more vague and personally I think the film suffers because of it. From what I've read about the film subsequently, the director wanted to imply the bleakness and alienation of modern day life. We see repetitive actions, bland and emotionless. We also see displays of emotion, but only as uninformed bystanders, the implication seemed to be that perhaps both are as significant or insignificant as each other. With this premise in mind, I also found the end equally insignificant. The actions of this last sequence are almost comic-book in their scope, they may be based on a real life incident, but like the headlines in a newspaper, seem to me only to be there to draw attention to the film. I know next to nothing about the people involved, but for their actions to make any sense I need a plausible rationale. Without it, we're left with a work only slightly more significant than a newspaper headline.

This movie is not so bad. I rented it because I was intrigued by the conceptual gloom it promised. But the actions of the family are not committed wholeheartedly, the mother is reluctant to follow through, indicating a hidden normalcy to the characters. The suicide is referenced in voice-over letters and in explanations as to how it "should" be done before it actually is done, (e.g. the father breaking down a shelf and telling his wife, who is drawn into the room and bewildered by the scene, "it is best if we do it systematically"). I felt that it would have been stronger if the family had not referenced it, but had just done it in an organic, fluid and uncompromising manner. When the characters have lines foreshadowing their suicide, it gives it a predictability as banal as the bureaucratic world the family is abandoning. I haven't seen any of Michael Haneke's other movies, but he seems like a very deliberate, intellect-wielding director. Sort of like a contemporary Godard, although he had to break from Godard in order to replace him. I was watching this with a friend, who said, "I feel like he is making a clear-cut argument." I felt the same way. Although I am not opposed to this way of approaching film-making, it detracts from the characters, because they become tools of the director's thesis rather than living, emotion-showing individuals. This movie is not disturbing, it isn't depressing, it's just a point of view, cut and dry. I did like one thing about this movie- the way that it was shot. It has a photographic crispness to it.