Benny's Video
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price:
$29.95
Austria Hotels Travel Price:
$26.99
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Manufacturer: Kino Video
Starring: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mühe, Ingrid Stassner, Stephanie Brehme
Directed By: Michael Haneke
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0738329046026
Format: Closed-captioned
Label: Kino Video
Manufacturer: Kino Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Kino Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2006-05-16
Running Time: 105
Studio: Kino Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1992
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: fails
Comment: Header says it: fails on two levels: not only as a horror flick, but as an intellectual take on why humans
have this urge/need/desire/propensity to murder for (apparently) no reason at all.
Could the answer (simply) be "boredom?" About the only character (the young killer's mother) who comes alive (if briefly) is when she takes her son to Egypt--in order to get away from some nasty bit of business
that the kid committed back in Europe and sobs for a while, guilt having gotten to her after all (for having attempted, along with her husband, to cover up their dull little punk's dirty deed.)
By the way, don't be fooled. This can't, CAN'T touch the original Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a true horror classic.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unattended children at doom
Comment: Young Benny enjoys renting movies and amateur video recording alone, while his parents remain totally unaware of his voyeuritic interests. Benny's interests for visceral media grows bent into a caustic reality against friendship. He meets a young girl outside a video store that accompanies him home. She learns the hard way not to trust anyone you meet so strangely and like the pig in the video she falls into the hands of death. That speaks for many of these stalkers and psychopaths out there today, so be careful.
Benny at least has some nerve to confess murder to his parents. Way to go boy, but who is going to get rid of the body? The last half of the movie is all about the parents acting out a plan to conceal the body away from the public. I suspect it has to do with money more than protection. That's my take, since no one in the family discussed it personally with Benny.
Why is this film worth 5 stars? Any film that can raise new ideas about something is worth 5 stars to me. This film distanced me away from the horror and towards the end I got closer to a message that was difficult to grasp at first. At the beginning you were really in the dark with this boy Benny, towards the middle you get a little closer to reality when you are in Egypt and at the end you come to a final close of truth. I suppose this is one way you can look at interpreting this film, but eventually you will come to share the director's opinion; that parents and media are partly responsible for abnormality in society.
Customer Rating:
Summary: No Funny Games this time
Comment: Austrian director Michael Haneke is adept at puncturing your mind, challenging your power of judgement, and then lingering deep in your memory. He directed this five years before the masterpiece Funny Games, and this is no less gripping of a tale.
Benny is a young teen whose obsession with violent films spills over into real life. The dilemma he ensnares his family in is quite disturbing. I love how Haneke defies many standard methods of storytelling, much of the violence occurs just off screen.
If you liked Funny Games, give this a look. There is not much humor here, the tone is dark, edgy, and desperate. Haneke is brilliant at pacing and sustaining momentum. 4.5 stars
Customer Rating:
Summary: Early Work of Haneke
Comment: Benny's Video is a unique early work by Michael Haneke. The star of the film is a young Arno Frisch...the same boy who coincidentally went on to play the lead role in his later work 'Funny Games.' Arno plays Benny, the 14 yr old apathetic child of 2 seemingly successful well off parents.
Benny has an obsession/fascination with videos and violence. He likes to visit the local video store. One day while browsing through some videos he spots a girl standing outside the store and ends up approaching her. He takes her home to show her his 'video' and then things get out of control.
Soon the parents end up accidentally discovering the extent of what happened on that video. They become conflicted. They weigh the options, discuss things and soon they come up with a plan... Seeing the parents deliberate over this decision about what to do with Benny and the victim was distressing. The question is.. What would you do if your son did what Benny did?...The realization and the twist at the end is scary. You find out what Benny is all about and what this kid is capable of even with his own flesh and blood and it's not what you think. This movie also shows the lengths parents may go to protect their child.. good or bad.
Also this movie seems to have had another meaning to it such as media having an impact on people's lives. Television, isolation and how violent images may effect someone. I think it was much more than that. The parents, desensitization, emotional emptyness, Benny himself and more. Also a point such as being aliented from the real world can possibly make one numb to it..
As far as violence or disturbing images I can't say I was overly shocked or suprised as to what happened in this movie because I already know Haneke's style. Also this was more about the 'story' than portraying blatant violence. Haneke can stir you with the images, the dialogue and the acting. I dont think any of his main characters have much of a conscience and when you add no conscience and realistic material you get something that has a deep impact on the mind and makes the audience think. It also leaves you with an empty feeling because with these films there are no happy endings and Haneke likes it that way. I recommend this film to people who like his other work.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Meat and Murder
Comment: BENNY'S VIDEO may be the key to what attitude, exactly, Michael Haneke is trying to elicit about voyeurism, a theme that often crops up his work. I think it is fair to say that all of Haneke's films are more about the audience watching them than about the story being watched. Here, we see to what degree a life can be mediated by lenses, viewfinders and monitors.
BENNY'S VIDEO is the story of a teenage boy whose sense of reality is so buffered by visual media that the act of killing someone ("to see what it's like, probably") functions to fill a void caused by seeing life only through lighted frames.
Benny, as played by Arno Frisch (who, five years later, would play one of the preppy young psychopaths of FUNNY GAMES), can't even be said clearly to be a disturbed young man. That's what is so unsettling about the movie: after bringing a young girl to his room and videotaping her, the video image of his crotch clearly shows that he had probably brought her there for the usual things unsupervised teenagers do. Events could just as easily have gone in that direction. But, tellingly, the girl is also so numbed by television that the killing is just as much her idea as it is Benny's. They both crave something real. Benny produces a butcher's gun, a sort of prod that fires .22 caliber bullets at close range; he boasts about stealing it and says that all the farmer had to say about its theft was that his family was lucky they didn't come a week later or they would have gone home without any ham. The prod is passed; dares and taunts go back and forth . . . and then something very real does happen.
I once saw Bob Keeshan ("Captain Kangaroo") interviewed by Johnny Carson, when he recounted an experience from his childhood in the 1930's. A man had been murdered in upstate New York, and even though Keeshan was many miles from the incident, he said he lay awake at night for many weeks just trying to grasp how one person could take the life of another person.
That perspective of killing was shocking to me as I heard it, because it made me realize just how much I take murder in stride, as part of the endless stream of infotainment with which I am bombarded on a daily basis. Michael Haneke's work leaves me craving something better to take the place of that indifference. I have a sense that his films leave me a better person than they found me.
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