Michael
★★★★★
(2011)
The majority of features and reviews written about Markus Schleinzer and his harrowing, masterfully crafted and deeply affecting debut film Michael have almost certainly all included a variation on this sentence: “Schleinzer has been working with Micheal Haneke for around 20 years as his casting director”. An Austrian casting director and child acting coach for Haneke’s The White Ribbon, he has entered the film world as late in his life as Haneke did and what an entrance. Although it’s true that Haneke’s influence is unmistakably on show (echoing Haneke’s own debut The Seventh Continent most loudly), the film manages to live its duration without fault alongside a wonderful burst of films inspired by Haneke including Giorgos Lanthimos’ absolutely wonderful Dogtooth and it more than holds it’s own even with the endless comparisons to him as the obvious springboard to discussing it. That niggle aside, Michael unfurls slowly as an arresting powerful piece of work.
The film spans a period of a few months in the life of Michael; a cold but acceptingly functional Austrian man. A man who owns a flat and has a a solid career in life insurance. He is a solitary man, on top of his household chores though socially removed from his family and uncomfortable around women. Michael is also a pedophile and a kidnapper who has kept a young boy named Wolfgang locked in his basement for an unclear number of years. “Get the christmas decorations from the hall for once!” he snaps at the boy in one of many scenes which uncover the depths of Michael’s horrific crimes, burrowing deep into the viewers subconscious as the pair decorate the tree.
We follow the captor and captive’s day to day lives mostly within the confines of the small house and although the abuse which Wolfgang endures is kept well off screen it is far more unsettling because of it. Even on their cold day trips to the park and the zoo the horror of what is happening lies pulsing under a thick layer of what we consider normality. As the pair walk past a father and son on a bright sunny day it’s Wolfgang’s look over his shoulder at the relationship he could have had which hurts the most. They do the dishes together, clean together, eat dinner together and as we watch Michael sing along in his car to Boney M’s disco hit Sonny the eeriness of the film reaches staggering proportions.
Michael, much like Dogtooth, is not a film that one can wholeheartedly recommend but such is the stigma of brave, uncomfortable and challenging cinema. The tension though out is almost unbearable and Schleinzer’s static style works wonders both on its audience’s want to look away and our want to know more about Michael. Why he is capable such horror? Why is anyone? After Wolfgang finishes a jigsaw puzzle he discovers there are a few pieces missing, “Yes”, says Michael, “But you can still see what it is.”
Especially after the media frenzied true case of Josef Fritzl, Michael is undeniably important as a careful statement of the darkest side of our own nature and although not a physically violent film Michael is far more upsetting and terrifying than I could have possibly imagined. The Parents of young children should be especially disturbed and angry by the films terse and awkward finale but as a piece of film making, it challenges us to look closely at our own relationship to the mundane but also at a psyche which we ourselves would love to lock far far away from sight.
