Decline of the West

Rating: Null/10 (12 January 2013)

It seems that a consensus's been achieved at last if not regarding this movie's meaning, but its main theme at any rate - it's apparently meant to be an exploration into the origins of totalitarian mentality and conditions promoting its development with Nazism taken as an example. Haneke is also known to have claimed on multiple occasions that his movies are too complicated to reduce their supposedly multi-layered and exquisitely nuanced meaning to messages roughly formulated in a slogan-like way of bad criticism. Well, let's take the liberty of not taking the director's word for it and ask ourselves: what does this film say anyway? And is Haneke's persistent elusiveness an indication of profundity or cowardice and manipulation?
First of all, let's admit the obvious - the nature of totalitarianism is hardly all about distorting ideals through turning them into a soulless absolute. Or rather this turning is the process's technical outcomes, not its underlying reasons. While the reasons, again, hardly constitute the binomial theorem. In which case, what would be the purpose of the movie's quite complicated construction and the essence of its hypothetically subtly nuanced meaning? Is it an attempt to provide an in-depth examination of the subject or is the author simply trying to dodge calling things by their right name and selling vagueness for complexity?
I'm afraid that Haneke's most recent film is not so much more than just a brilliantly - which should be admitted - executed manipulation that fairly successfully accomplishes the shift mentioned. In quite cunning a manner the director fills this work with multiple ostensibly mysterious scenes and details that are obviously supposed to create an impression that they can be validly interpreted in several different ways. However, by means of that the author totally eliminates the possibility of a single consistent overall explication. As a result the audience is left with nothing better than the necessity to invent for Haneke the meaning - or meanings - of this indeed highly intricate construction which he has forgotten to put into.
Or deliberately decided not to do so - at least in any articulate way. Even though he was talking about things which were, in fact, not that ambiguous at all. As well as he failed to think of nothing better than referring - though in a parabolic way - to a hundred year old events and some relatively "innocuous" at present nation to fabricate a simulation of an honest utterance on this indeed very serious and momentous subject. And did so now - when our world is balancing on the verge of a catastrophe, which coming into reality will inevitably make this subject even more relevant. Because it's much easier to assume the demeanour of an aesthete and deliver abstract judgement in respect of something so distant. And, of course, we are all against any manifestations of fascism and totalitarianism. But it somehow doesn't prevent us from accepting the Patriot Act.
And it's so nice of the director to have avoided any didactics, too. Because how can we be bothered with telling us what is what without being provided with a choice to decide for ourselves whether we want to think so or not - or rather with an idiotic illusion that we do have such a choice - even if the audacity of an utterance just amounts to observing in a definitive manner that the sky is blue? And, surprisingly enough, guess what? This sickening "political correctness" conveniently applied to the process of perception of reality - so that anyone could lie to oneself and everyone around unrestrictedly regardless the degree to which this reality happens to be distorted along the way - doesn't somehow lead to neither increase in acuity which is employed in the process of observation nor to greater accurateness of its results.
Instead we see every day how black is sold for white in ways so barefaced that they often happen to be not just beyond good and evil, but far beyond any boundaries of elementary sanity. And in this badly strange world, where all philosophical systems happen to be pushed out by vulgar kinds of phenomenology, where art suffocates from a reek being issued by the decaying corpse of post-modernism (the latter, frankly, never smelt too good, even when alive), in our completely screwed-up society where everything is faked - politics, economy, religion, communications, culture - such "heroic intellectuals", who come up with such daring insights, seem to know exactly what they do. To such a world they offer the art of imitation and an imitation of art - that is the only kinds of it that will be welcomed by those who chose to imitate their existence. Thus it may simply be about offering a product that is in demand and will be "bought" - consider a basket of awards won by this movie, while similarly impeccable in purely cinematic terms but also honest in terms of their messages Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" or Von Trier's "Dogville", for instance, were either completely misunderstood or pretty much disregarded.
So what we are dealing with here is hardly a mercilessly honest investigation into the nature of violence, origins of totalitarianism or anything of the sort. Frankly, to a much greater degree it looks like a manipulative and cowardly exercise in political correctness, undertaken in the area of ideas, the apotheosis of our Western hypocrisy of today - albeit very skilfully disguised by the undoubtedly highly proficient director as something more dignified. While what we really need to do, instead of getting engaged in such exercises, is to say that "2 + 2" doesn't equal "it's very complicated and depends on many things" nor "whatever suits you today". It equals "4". It makes sense to say this today - if we still want to have this option tomorrow.