Minister of Fear

The New York Times Magazine profiles "controversial" film director Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher, Cache) in Minister of Fear.

"Making waves...is what Haneke has become famous for. Over the last two decades, the director has developed a reputation for stark, often brutal films that place the viewer -- sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly -- in the uncomfortable role of accomplice to the crimes playing out on-screen. This approach has made Haneke one of contemporary cinema's most reviled and revered figures, earning him everything from accusations of obscenity to a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art next month. ''Funny Games,'' the movie Haneke was shooting in New York and Long Island, is the American remake of a highly controversial film by the same name that he directed in 1997. It was from its beginnings targeted at the American moviegoing public -- and no other word but ''targeted'' will do. ''Funny Games'' is a direct assault on the conventions of cinematic violence in the United States, and the new version of the film, with its English-speaking cast and unmistakably American production design, makes this excruciatingly clear. More surprising still, Haneke remade this attack on the Hollywood thriller for a major Hollywood studio, Warner Independent Pictures, and refused to alter the original film's story in the slightest. "