Haneke destroying the sacred temple of the atomistic family. The values we associate with the family, love, security, trust, it being a shelter against the world, turn in on themselves to destroy it. For the love within family already involves violence, the security already involves egoism and selfishness, its seclusion involves alienation. What happens before (the slap, the carwash, their shopping routines) are not much different than the ending in this respect. The aquarium was a metaphor of the ideal of a happy, secure home, amidst the horrors and chaos of the external world. Its destruction is painful because it is the destruction of the dream, the acknowledgment of reality. The hardcore reality is that, family is no refuge from the horrors and terrors of life (and death), it is an extension of it. In death we are alone.

A middle-class family, consisting of father Georg (Dieter Berner), mother Anna (Birgit Doll), and young daughter Evi (Leni Tanzer) live out their routine daily lives in apparent discomfort. The film is split into three sections - 1987, 1988, and 1989. The first two years, we are given an insight into their thinking as Anna narrates letters written to her parents. We witness the mundaneness of their lives in scenes showing them eating breakfast, at work, going through a car wash, driving in their car. They are trapped by their repetitive surroundings in an unavoidable consumerist world. The third section sees the parents quitting their jobs, buying power tools, and emptying their bank accounts. They tell people they're going to Australia, only they plan to destroy their home and kill themselves. Haneke is the master of the cold and the uncomfortable. This was his debut feature, only he seemed to have already mastered this skill. In his later films, we witness brutal animal slaughter in Benny's Video (1992), genital mutilation in The Piano Teacher (2001), and possibly the most shocking suicide ever depicted on film in his masterpiece Hidden (2005). In The Seventh Continent, we know what is coming. It is laid out quite early in the film. When it comes, it is every bit as unpleasant as you would hope it wouldn't be. Haneke doesn't need blood or dramatic music. Instead he just lets us hear the last gargled breaths, taking place off-camera, of someone taken an overdose of pills. Powerful, terrible and profoundly disturbing. Haneke, in my opinion, is the world's greatest living director. Granted, the likes of Godard and Herzog are still making films, but their heyday was in the 1960's and 70's respectively. Haneke is in his prime, and their is no-one is making more skillful films. He based The Seventh Continent on a newspaper article he read about a family that committed suicide in a similar fashion (as we learn over the end credits), and uses it as a commentary on a world obsessed with formality. This is certainly not an enjoyable film, but it is one that will linger with me for a long time, which is similar to the effect Hidden had on me. It will occasionally test your patience (scenes are repeated and their are long periods without dialogue), but its power is undeniable. An assured debut.

Seriously, this movie is so boring! *spoiler coming you'll regret you never read*The story of the movie is: couple with a daughter, bored of their meaningless everyday lives decided to suicide but first sells all their assets, flushes their money and destroy their belongings. Thats it!!!! Seriously, thats it, you'll thank me for not letting you see this booooooring 2 hours long movie where nothing happens!!Endless meaningless scenes like brushing teeth, eating cereal. Static scenes also, no camera movement for the entire movie. I begged for something good to happen but no...

This movie is not so bad. I rented it because I was intrigued by the conceptual gloom it promised. But the actions of the family are not committed wholeheartedly, the mother is reluctant to follow through, indicating a hidden normalcy to the characters. The suicide is referenced in voice-over letters and in explanations as to how it "should" be done before it actually is done, (e.g. the father breaking down a shelf and telling his wife, who is drawn into the room and bewildered by the scene, "it is best if we do it systematically"). I felt that it would have been stronger if the family had not referenced it, but had just done it in an organic, fluid and uncompromising manner. When the characters have lines foreshadowing their suicide, it gives it a predictability as banal as the bureaucratic world the family is abandoning. I haven't seen any of Michael Haneke's other movies, but he seems like a very deliberate, intellect-wielding director. Sort of like a contemporary Godard, although he had to break from Godard in order to replace him. I was watching this with a friend, who said, "I feel like he is making a clear-cut argument." I felt the same way. Although I am not opposed to this way of approaching film-making, it detracts from the characters, because they become tools of the director's thesis rather than living, emotion-showing individuals. This movie is not disturbing, it isn't depressing, it's just a point of view, cut and dry. I did like one thing about this movie- the way that it was shot. It has a photographic crispness to it.