Michael Haneke Trilogy Boxset

Michael Haneke's recent success with Hidden has perhaps influenced this release of his earlier work, three films referred to as the 'glaciation' trilogy. Dealing with the dark side of consumerism, they paint a grim portrait of Austrian middle-class life, as well as touching on the greater picture of how the world is represented in mainstream film and television. All three films – The 7th Continent, Benny's Video, and 71 Fragments of A Chronology of Chance – depict young people raised in the moral vacuum of suburbia who turn to murder to give meaning to their lives. Individually, these are gripping, with each experimenting with stylistic methods to good effect, but in successive viewing they begin to drag, as you start to question the filmmaker's morality rather than society's. The auteur's likely defence, of being as much a warped creation of society and the media as his characters, may explain his making of such brutal films, but also justifies us in switching them off after one viewing to avoid the same thing happening to us. [Alec McLeod]