Daniel Hundstorfer Basically, I have started to get sick of Michael Haneke's torture. He is one of the most ruthless director as he only creates characters without sentiments. The Benny here is so hateful and I just can't help cursing him while I am watching the film. I get the point. It's a critique of bourgeois life. Oh my. But still. Haneke, get a life!

OJT One of Mikael Haneke's first feature films makes a great impact on the viewer. I'm writing this after seeing this film for thew second time, 21 years after watching it in a cinema, in a film club setting. Back then we didn't know how many extraordinary films Haneke would be making later on. In that setting, I must say this showed promise of a controversial director with an important message in his films. Haneke wants to make discussions, and don't really care if he is controversial or even disgust people watching his films.Benny is a loner of a 14 year old boy, using so much time in his own room watching violent videos as well as making his own videos with his Video8 camera. His parents are rich, but largely absent from his upbringing, but are more hands on than normal, when they are at home. During a trip to the video store Benny meets a girl of his own age, and invites her home, to show her a video h has made about a pig being shot with a slaughter gun. He shows her the gun he has stolen, and from there the story turns severe.It's not really possible to give a review of this film without telling too much. Still there's no point in spilling the beans. The film has more than one surprise up in the sleeve, and is well suited for discussions in a group or a media class. I can assure you that the viewers will have different views on what they make of this movie. Why is Benny doing this? Is this likely or even at all realistic? Why do they do the things they do? Whta would you have done in the same situation? Who's to blame? Does it provoke you? Are we watching a sociopath in the making? Why did Haneke make this film?As always in Haneke's films, the actors are brilliant in their play, though it's easy to criticize the ideas if you don't like them. Arno Frisch is brilliantly portraying young Benny, as a boy who has lost his way due to some reason or another.After viewing this film the first time, back in 1993, we had one of the greatest discussions I ever experienced after a film. We always went to a café side-by-side to the cinema after the film club showings, and this film made us having a major discussion. So I never forgot this film, and Haneke, or Austrian films for that matter. I must say this film made an immensely impact on me due to this. Watching it again so many years later, reminds me of what I really remember of the film, which is almost half. When you remember so much of it, it's no doubt a great film. Not flawless, but important as well as remarkable.This can't be recommended to the faint hearted, nor due to the content, the violence or the moral. You'll better stay away if you are easily disgusted or offended.

prodigy_ dancer I don't find the movie particularly interesting. There's a consensus among the viewers that Benny's actions are influenced by his lifestyle and media violence addiction. Whether this was Haneke's idea or not the message is simply wrong.What is overlooked is that Benny is a typical psychopath. In real life it'd be much harder to make a diagnosis but for fictional characters approximations are good enough. The portrayal isn't completely accurate but many of the common signs are there: shallow affect, the total lack of empathy, conscience and remorse, insidiousness, impulsiveness, irresponsibility, casual use of violence, etc. Anyone who wants to learn more should read "Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us" by Robert D. Hare, one of the leading experts in the field.Long story short: Benny's media preferences are the extension of his pathological personality not the other way around. Psychopaths existed long before Hollywood and their actions are not dictated by something they saw in a film somewhere.

tonysx Michael Haneke's Benny's Video is a film with a lot to say. It's a commentary on the media, desensitizing youth, and the parental structure. That's quite a lot to swallow in one movie but Haneke attempts it with a raw experience of violence and absurdity. No main character in this film really acts in any way that can be construed of as normal. The film is about a young boy named Benny who has an obsession with videos and violence. From the first shot it's obvious that this boy isn't wrapped to tight. He watches a video that he shot of a pig being slaughtered with a bolt pistol. He rewinds the tape and watches it again in slow motion with fascination. Benny throughout the film continues to watch this video along with news clips of war and violent movies. He video tapes almost everything and even uses the camera to look out the window of his room. This symbolizes how Benny views the world through a camera and the television. He is not in touch with reality and Haneke makes that very evident. The film progresses as Benny meets a young girl at the video store and takes her to his home while his parents are away. He's not trying to get lucky however. Instead Benny takes this as an opportunity to use the bolt pistol that he stole after he filmed the pig slaughter to kill the young girl. This is a long brutal scene that is viewed almost entirely through Benny's video camera. Even though all the violence is off screen it's hard to watch. This is the strongest sequence in the film. It's in fact the only part of the movie where a character is empathetic. That's the young girl by the way not Benny. Benny continues his weekend by going to a club with friends, taking in a movie and getting a new buzz cut. Oh and then he cleans up the dead body in his bedroom. When his parents return he shows them the video of the murder and than a very long and unemotional conversation ensues between the parents deciding what to do with Benny and the corpse. They decide the best course of action is for his mother to take Benny on a vacation to Egypt while his father Georg stays at home and chops up the body to cover it up. Sounds like a plan. Everything seems fine when Benny and his mom return. Georg asks Benny why he did it and then things go back to the good old days back before the family included a homicidal teenager. The film than concludes with Benny at the police station assumedly turning in his parents for the murder. What a special young boy Benny is. This film tries to comment on dehumanization and the effects of the media. It is unrelenting in addressing these issues, maybe a little too much. When Benny's parents find out that he just killed a young girl they are not as much concerned with why there son is so screwed up but how they are going to clean up the mess he has caused. He is taken on vacation and never once reprimanded for the little crime he committed. They never address to him what happened or even take away his camera and television. Kids get in more trouble for not taking out the garbage. They choose to cover for him and he ultimately betrays them with the same amount of remorse he had when he murdered a young girl. These characters are flat and unrelateable. That's Haneke's style. Just like in "Funny Games" he is not concerned with connecting with the audience but with insulting the conventions of modern media and he does that well.