*****
In an interview on the DVD, Haneke said that the film is based on an article he read about a family who committed suicide in a very deliberate and considered way. One of the things they did prior to dying was to tear up their money and flush it down the toilet. The article said the police discovered that the money was flushed because they found little bits of currency stuck in the plumbing. He said that he knew that that audiences would be upset with that scene, and also said that in today's society the idea of destroying money is more taboo than parents killing their child and themselves.
The film opens inside a mechanical carwash. One reviewer described the first 15 minutes very well: “But Haneke’s stroke of brilliance in The Seventh Continent is his visual “angle” on the Schobers. A good quarter-of-an-hour passes before he reveals their faces to us. Instead, we are given a series of tight close-ups on the objects of the Schobers’ everyday routine: alarm clock, door handle, the breakfast table, interior of the car, the supermarket till; and fragmented views of their bodies: a hand, an arm, the nape of a neck, the back of a head, a shoulder. It’s a strikingly effective way of enunciating the film’s theme, of emphasising the loneliness, isolation, sense of disjunction, and alienation of each family member.”
It’s intriguing trying to make sense of the images as they provide glimpses into a very routine mundane family life. Occasionally small events provide an unsettling disconnect. It was like watching Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Both of these films linger on the domestic and the mundane. (I still can’t make my bed without being reminded of Jeanne Dielmann.) For me, the decision that the family made came as a surprise but not a great one. They seem worn down by the drudgery of ordinary life and there is no joy. Joy is an important thing for me. About fifteen years ago, I was in a university program about organisational change. I had to identify seven moments of joy in my life. I had trouble with this task. Not enough moments. I could get to seven but it seemed like a bit of a struggle. I decided then that I needed more joy in my life more often and I think I am in a much better space. Throughout The Seventh Continent, a poster appears and reappears like a fantasy. It is a beach scene (apparently of an Australian beach – the Seventh Continent of the title). It’s weirdly unsettling – it’s not until you look at it closely that you realise that it’s geographically impossible. It is actually a fantasy; it will not deliver what this family is looking for.
Not everyone will like this film – it is troubling – but I agree with this reviewer:
"Arguably, no greater cinematic interpreter of alienation exists in the world today than Austrian director Michael Haneke. Haneke shows us characters whose response to the world around them has deadened, people who have forgotten how to feel, how to love, how to care. The Seventh Continent, the first film of the trilogy that, with Benny's Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), depicts what Haneke has called "my country's emotional glaciation."
