Benny's Video
| Benny's Video | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Michael Haneke |
| Produced by | Veit Heiduschka |
| Written by | Michael Haneke |
| Starring |
Arno Frisch Angela Winkler Ulrich Mühe |
| Cinematography | Christian Berger |
| Edited by | Marie Homolkova |
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Production
company |
Lang Film
Wega Film |
| Distributed by | Roxie Releasing (US) |
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Release date
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Running time
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110 minutes |
| Country | Austria Switzerland |
| Language | German English Arabic French |
Benny's Video is a 1992 Austrian-Swiss horror-of-personality film directed by Michael Haneke. The plot of the film centers on Benny (Arno Frisch), a teenager who views much of his life as distilled through video images, and his well-to-do parents Anna (Angela Winkler) and Georg (Ulrich Mühe), who enable Benny's focus on video cameras and images. The film won the FIPRESCI Award at the 1993 European Film Awards.
The film opens with a home video of the slaughter with a captive bolt pistol of a pig on a European farm. The video rewinds to play the slaughter in slow motion, which emphasizes the hand-held barrel against the pig's fore-skull and the cartridge explosion. A party centered on a game called Pilot and Passengers is broken up by Georg and Anna, when they return home while the party is in progress. The host of the party, Eva, is their daughter who lives in another part of town and who has, it turns out in questioning of Benny after the incident, taken advantage of the planned absence of Georg and Anna to host the impromptu party in their home. While watching a newscast, Georg and Anna discuss the money Eva won in the pyramid scheme she was promoting at the party. In a locker room at school, Benny encourages his friends to take positions in his own Pilot and Passengers game.
While his parents are away for the weekend, Benny invites a girl (Ingrid Stassner) he has seen outside the local video store to his home. He shows her the video of the pig slaughter, and they talk about the film. She: "Did you make this film? How was it, with the pig? I mean, have you ever seen a dead person--a real one, I mean?" Benny: "No. I once saw a TV program about the tricks they use in action films. It's all ketchup and plastic," and then he unveils and loads the slaughtering gun. He holds it against his chest, and dares the girl to discharge it. When she refuses, he calls her a coward (Feigling!). He holds it against her chest, and when he hesitates, she calls him a Feigling also. He fires the gun, and she falls. Her falling reveals a video monitor, on which we see her crawling away from Benny and completely out of frame, Benny running to reload the gun and returning to shoot her a second time, the girl crawling back partially into frame, Benny again reloading and firing, this time apparently at her head, and, finally, her body remaining still.
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