There's always a recurring theme we witness in Haneke's films; life is brutal...
...and time to time, too painful to bear.
No need to be a careful eye; director Jesper Ganslandt is a follower of Haneke cinematography, which is based on solid psychoanalysis of both borderline human nature and structure of society with a complicated resolution of history. This what Ganslandt does in this film.
Krister is a man we see and pass by on the street in our everyday lives and also can be easily mixed with who we really are. An ordinary family man with a decent job and has what we call it a normal life. But, mostly, it's not what it seems above the surface. At the beginning of the movie, he wakes up in the middle of his own toilet with blood all over his clothes and place. Then we see him take off, do his everyday routine and go back home at the end of the day. And this is when we get it; the reason behind the blood on his clothes is a murder he has committed a night before. The murder of his wife and a plus. An attempted murder on his own kid.
From this part of the film we see Krister dealing with his own personality, which comes down to characteristic resolution that consists on his own past and how he perceived the term family, how he's been treated by his own parents, especially the mother. The mother is always the key, as in our lives as well, she forms a perfect picture of Oedipus. As a man who can only communicate with people through his headphone and not in person, Krister isn't a successful example of out-of-closet personality, and having a hard time to integrate it with his life as he's known it thus far, and eventually, end up in destroying his own family which is pointing out destroying his own past, and especially, again, the mother.
I think what makes this film stunning is that the amount of moments we see ourselves in Krister. Krister is who we are and who we are completes the character Krister wee witness in this movie. He can be any of us, if we consist on the theory of that most of us are homosexuals subliminally. This is a story of not being. Of not being yourself, not taking your sexual identity in your hands as you like...
...Of not being who you really are.
...and time to time, too painful to bear.
No need to be a careful eye; director Jesper Ganslandt is a follower of Haneke cinematography, which is based on solid psychoanalysis of both borderline human nature and structure of society with a complicated resolution of history. This what Ganslandt does in this film.
Krister is a man we see and pass by on the street in our everyday lives and also can be easily mixed with who we really are. An ordinary family man with a decent job and has what we call it a normal life. But, mostly, it's not what it seems above the surface. At the beginning of the movie, he wakes up in the middle of his own toilet with blood all over his clothes and place. Then we see him take off, do his everyday routine and go back home at the end of the day. And this is when we get it; the reason behind the blood on his clothes is a murder he has committed a night before. The murder of his wife and a plus. An attempted murder on his own kid.
From this part of the film we see Krister dealing with his own personality, which comes down to characteristic resolution that consists on his own past and how he perceived the term family, how he's been treated by his own parents, especially the mother. The mother is always the key, as in our lives as well, she forms a perfect picture of Oedipus. As a man who can only communicate with people through his headphone and not in person, Krister isn't a successful example of out-of-closet personality, and having a hard time to integrate it with his life as he's known it thus far, and eventually, end up in destroying his own family which is pointing out destroying his own past, and especially, again, the mother.
I think what makes this film stunning is that the amount of moments we see ourselves in Krister. Krister is who we are and who we are completes the character Krister wee witness in this movie. He can be any of us, if we consist on the theory of that most of us are homosexuals subliminally. This is a story of not being. Of not being yourself, not taking your sexual identity in your hands as you like...
...Of not being who you really are.