Though we can see some of his stylistic flourishes and thematic preoccupations in embryonic form in these early efforts, there’s also an intimacy, an obsessive attention to emotional detail that runs through them. Seen in that light, Paul’s little wink, along with his subsequent asides, could be understood as a confrontation—a horrific prelude to the picture’s dismantling of bloody spectacle. But watch closely and you’ll see that the gesture also soothes us, at least a little bit.
Because for all our high-minded ruminating about metatextuality and deconstruction, breaking the fourth wall is ultimately a device used by mainstream filmmakers as well as by postmodern provocateurs. He pulls us out of the film at precisely the moments when it threatens to become too disturbing to bear. In so doing, he seems to reassure us that it’s all just a movie. Michael Haneke’s most notorious provocation, Funny Games spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. Austrian critics argued that the intention was to undermine the heimat genre and its values, which are bourgeois and based on the home.
The character Paul breaks the fourth wall throughout the film and addresses the camera in various ways. As he directs Anna to look for her dead dog, he turns, winks, and smirks at the camera. When he asks the family to bet on their survival, he turns to the camera and asks the audience whether they will bet as well. At the end of the film, when requesting RPG Games eggs from the next family, he looks into the camera and smirks again.
Toward the end of the film, he postpones killing the rest of the family because the film has not yet reached feature length. Throughout the film, Paul shows awareness of the audience’s expectations. The film frequently blurs the line between fiction and reality, especially highlighting the act of observation.
At the end of the film, Paul again smirks triumphantly at the audience. As a self-aware character, he is able to go against the viewers’ wishes and make himself the winner of the film. Paul also frequently states his intentions to follow the standards of film plot development. When he asks the audience to bet, he guesses that the audience wants the family to win. After the killers vanish in the third act, Paul later explains that he had to give the victims a last chance to escape or else it would not be dramatic.
However, Paul also causes the film to go against convention on a number of occasions. In thrillers, one protagonist that the audience can sympathize with usually survives, but here all three family members die. When Anna successfully shoots Peter, as a possible start to a heroic escape for the family, Paul uses a remote control to rewind the film itself and prevent her action. After Peter shoots Georgie, Paul scolds him for killing the child first because it goes against convention and limits the suspense for the rest of the film. At the end of the film, the murderers prevent Anna from using a knife in the boat to cut her bonds. An earlier close-up had pointed out the knife’s location as a possible set-up for a final-act escape, but this becomes a red herring.