- 1994
- Roxie Releasing
- 1 h 45 m
SummaryA 14-year-old video enthusiast is so caught up in film fantasy that he can no longer relate to the real world, to such an extent that he commits murder and records an on-camera confession for his parents.
Directed By:Michael Haneke
Written By:Michael Haneke
Benny's Video (1992)
Metascore
Mixed or Average
60
User score
Generally Favorable
7.3
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
60
56% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
33% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
11% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
83
Haneke's schoolmarm tendencies come to the surface in Benny's Video, which implicates the media for desensitizing people to violence.
75
Haneke carefully and ingeniously presents the boy's point of view without sympathizing with him. He then does the same with his horrified but protective parents. [18 Nov 1994, p.G35]
67
Benny's Video renders the viewer complicit in the actions unfolding so nightmarishly, forcing us to ask ourselves why we watch.
By Wells Dunbar
FULL REVIEW 63
Haneke directs Benny's Video in a cool, dispassionate style that matches the austerity of his subject, but keeps us at a distinct remove. And even though he introduces a faintly optimistic note in the film's last moments -- a hint at possible redemption -- his film is mostly a grim, downbeat experience. [01 Apr 1994, p.C3]
60
Overly familiar in its themes, though still somewhat potent in its depiction of an alienated 14-year-old boy from a well-to-do family who's preoccupied with video technology and winds up commiting a monstrous act. In some ways, the portrait of his parents is even more chilling.
50
Documentaries show us what can be seen; fiction features, to qualify as art, should visualize for us the usually unseen. Benny's Video, in which the thought processes of the characters are never delivered to the camera, is all surface. Its implicit claim is that by doing nothing, it is doing everything. But there are times, and this is one of them, when less is merely less. [27 Mar 1993]
38
Benny’s Video is a smug, contemptuous, passive-aggressive attack on the dehumanizing effects of media, without even the common decency to offer shrill sensationalism to punch up its subsequently feckless, reactionary, pomo assertions.
User score
Generally Favorable
7.3
84% Positive
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
11% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
5% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
Apr 21, 2022
7
This is so unsettling. I do think that the pacing drops somewhere after the midpoint but this film is a mean, cold character study.
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Jan 21, 2024
0
The only disturbing thing about this movie is the fact that in order to watch it you have to try your best to stay awake, which I failed at doing and fell asleep 2 times in the first 30 minutes of movie after which I turned it off not to waste other time of my life. Michael Haneke gives us another demonstration of his incompetence as a director and ability to add at least 1 and half hr of useless scenes in every movie to avoid them being 15 minutes long. BOOOOORING
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Production Company:
- Bernard Lang
- Langfilm
- Wega Film
Release Date:Nov 18, 1994
Duration:1 h 45 m
Tagline:From the director of THE PIANO TEACHER and CACHÉ
Awards
European Film Awards
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Viennale
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Chicago International Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
