Benny's Video (1992)
Average Rating: 5.3/10
Reviews Counted: 6
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
Release Date: Jan 1, 1992 Wide
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Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 4,258
My Rating
Movie Info
For 14-year-old Benny, anything recorded on videotape is inherently better and more real than what he can see with his naked eyes. He is barely noticed by his professional parents and spends most of his time either viewing wild and violent films or looking at the view outside his window through his video camera. One day, on a whim, he invites a girl to his house and coolly murders her while his video camera is rolling. Then he hides the body temporarily in his closet and goes off to a party. The
Jan 1, 1992 Wide
May 16, 2006
Cast
-
Angela Winkler
Mother -
Ulrich Mühe
Father
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All Critics (10) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (2) | Rotten (6) | DVD (4)
The second panel in Haneke's trilogy (preceded by Seventh Continent and followed by 71 Fragments) offers a chilling and haunting postmodern look at isolation, alienation and violence, with a critique of mass media effects on actual behavior.
To Benny, and to us, too (at least for the duration of the film) the mediated image - blinkered, manipulable, vicarious - is the 'reality' of choice.
[Makes] arguments that Haneke delivers with frosty menace but, alas, an also typically pedantic, haranguing tenor.
Similar to The Seventh Continent, this film's objective is to analyze and deconstruct the effects rather than senselessly guess their causes
in the end, with a character that repellent and a message so heavy handed, there is no need to commit ourselves to this bitter, merciless film.
When Eric Cartman grows older and goes to film school, his student films will resemble the early works of Michael Haneke.
A smug, contemptuous, passive-aggressive attack on the dehumanizing effects of media.
Audience Reviews for Benny's Video
Super Reviewer
The film's message is a relevant one, it suggests that the media has a detrimental, and in this case fatal, desensitising effect. However, it suggests this in a rather hyperbolic fashion. The film loses its credibility through how explicitly and rather insularly it conveys its message. In my opinion, it's clear that Benny is a warped individual with an innate lack of remorse, no film or news report can rid someone of their senses to the point of sociopathy. Benny is a contemptible person, and he's purposely constructed that way, but he isn't someone who's the product of desensitisation, his cold, empathy devoid persona is that of genealogically tarnished mind.
Narratively speaking, the film's first hour or so engrosses you with its unpleasantness and realism. The film places the viewer in a 'What If?' situation that's somewhat reminiscent of films such as 'Deliverance', however it isn't even half as resonant owing to the abhorrence of the film's events, the callousness of Benny and the steely reserve of his parents. During the last 40 minutes of the film, there is something of a pacing problem, I felt the film lost the edge and tension it had created; this isn't a particularly pressing issue, but the film certainly felt longer than 105 minutes.
I found 'Benny's Video' to be a fundamentally flawed film; it would've worked if it had a more balanced, rational message at its core. Many lobbyists, in the haze of their ignorance and typically political agendas, would vehemently agree with this film. I am of the opinion that there is a substantial difference between watching something and doing something. Violent media can, at the very, very most, be a mere substitutional factor amongst many factors that could somewhat exacerbate the pace of an unhinged, unwell mind.
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- El vídeo de Benny (ES)

